[ntoshev]

Both HN and Facebook are not regular forums (they have distinct features). If you are trying to change politics with software, perhaps a good way to approach the problem is to try solving something specific, then build the community and write the code to do precisely that. One example is gathering support for specific campaigns. I live in Bulgaria, we have active protest movement against the current government, and a lot of the coordination and debate happens on Facebook. I had a specific campaign in mind that didn't happen for legal reasons, but it would have been very interesting otherwise. Send me a mail if you want to know more.

I think it's a mistake to think about real and virtual world as separate things. We live in a single world, and the online part grows more important with time. There are bits that are quite independent from the offline part, like interacting on HN with pseudonyms. Other bits, like Facebook, are typically much closer and interconnected with our offline life. Some mobile apps are even more integrated with the real world, although they are not very social.