Facebook is your new God and Santa Claus (and it's a good thing)

It is inevitable while growing up your parents will utilize the all knowing presence of God or Santa to try and persuade you to not eat your boogers. You will argue that no one can see you and it doesn't hurt anyone, but your parents will come back with God or Santa (way worse) knows. In his fantastic book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt examines studies that indicate the majority of humans in all cultures and nationalities act immorally (lie, steal, cheat) when they do not believe others will know and they have an advantage to gain.

Religion has been the human solution to suppressing this trait for the past 10,000 years. Religion builds a community to judge the individual, a set of rules to judge the person by and even provides an all knowing figure who Knows even when no one else does. If someone breaks these rules, then gossip will spread to the community and the person will be seen as an outcast. Religion and gossip promote conformity, and conformity has helped humans become the dominant species on the planet. By having like minded individuals whom we could trust to act similar to ourselves allowed our ancestors to form hunting parties, to build communities to raise each others young and to survive in general. 

Facebook and other social networks are replacing the eye in the sky aspect of religion. When you know that there is a good chance you will be photographed or videotaped at a location and that information will be published for the world to see, you're going to think twice about skipping work or cheating on a spouse. When you know that if you say something derogatory to someone and that you will be judged by others for saying it you examine the statement from all angles to see how it comes off. Overall, now that someone is, without question, watching and judging it will make humans act in a more cooperative and acceptable manner.  

What I am 100% not doing is saying the government should be the "eye in the sky". Government suffers the same fatal characteristic as religion, the small amount people with the power will do anything to keep it. What I'm saying is that as the internet becomes the neural system for the human species, social networks are becoming the moral system. As the moral system continues to develop and mature with the blending of cultures, we are crowd sourcing morality from ourselves and this will lead to a moral awakening not seen for thousands of years.