China, the final leg for Facebook to take over the world?

Quoting Wikipedia -

"As of May 2016, the only countries to ban access around the clock to the social networking site are China, Iran, and North Korea. However, since the vast majority of North Korean residents do not have access to the internet, in reality China and Iran are the only countries where access to Facebook is actively restricted in a wholesale manner."

China has the largest internet user base in the world, 513 million people compared to 245 million in US, and a large part of the users are active social media users. Hence, we can see why Facebook is desperately (link here and here) trying to win the favor, and approval of the Chinese authorities.

However, even if great firewall of China opens its door to Facebook, it remains to be seen if Mark Zuckerberg and team would be able to replicate their success in the Middle Kingdom - the reason being most young internet-savvy Chinese are now accustomed to the use of the likes of WeChat, RenRen, Weibo.

If the social media giant agrees to strictly censor content delivered to Chinese users, then it would seem pointless for people to ditch their current platforms for Facebook.

The X-number of books a year challenge and why it's pointless

Way back in January 2015 (which was 2 years ago), Mark Zuckerberg issued this challenge to himself - to read a book every other week (https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101828640656261).

And so his post garnered much likes and fanfare from Facebook users around the world, with many vowing to follow his lead and start reading one book fortnightly or even weekly.

Why then, you may ask, would I disagree with it and think it's pointless to set such a challenge?

While reading is a good and relatively inexpensive (some may argue books arent cheap!) hobby, most people do not take time to think over what they read.

In essence, reading without understanding is actually detrimental to knowledge cultivation. This is akin to following an idea on a whim and taking it at face value. Either that or the motive is simply to add to the book count and post it as a shameless and perfectly pointless achievement on Facebook.

Reading is just a knowledge acquisition tool and a means to crafting a thinker out of a person. If a person does not understand what he reads, then the time could have been better spent doing something much more productive like sharing dumb news over social media.