Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has claimed if Facebook was around a few years earlier, it might have prevented the US invasion of Iraq.
The billionaire, who launched the social media site in February 2004, was speaking to students at Georgetown University when he made the curious claim.
"Back when I was in college our country had just gone to war in Iraq and the mood on our campus was disbelief," US media reported the 35-year-old as saying.
"Lot of people felt like we were acting without hearing a lot of important perspectives, and the toll on soldiers and their families and our national psyche was severe, yet most of us felt like we were powerless to do anything about it.
"And I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, then maybe it coulda gone differently."
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The US and allies invaded Iraq in March 2003, citing then-President Saddam Hussein's acquisition of so-called weapons of mass destruction.
Even without tools like Facebook to assist in organisation, an estimated 10 to 30 million people worldwide took to the streets just weeks beforehand to oppose the looming invasion, including in New Zealand.
Guinness World Records noted Rome's 3 million-strong march was the biggest single anti-war rally in history.
"Back then, I was building an early version of Facebook for my community, and I got to see my beliefs play out at smaller scale," Zuckerberg said.
"When students got to express who they were and what mattered to them, they organised more social events, started more businesses, and even challenged some established ways of doing things on campus.
"It taught me that while the world's attention focuses on major events and institutions, the bigger story is that most progress in our lives comes from regular people having more of a voice."
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The US and allies failed to find weapons of mass destruction, and the ensuing power vacuum in the region has been blamed for the rise of terrorist group Islamic State.
Newshub.
