[manjushri]

>By that definition, every conceivable grouping of human beings that has any sort of leadership has a government, but that definition is so broad as to be useless.

Well, that is in accordance with the dictionary definition.

The bigger and more powerful the grouping becomes, the more practical the definition becomes. Which is why it could be a useful designation for an entity with psychological control over 2,000,000,000+ people, but not so much for a football league with ~100 people (though technically it still can be called a governing body).

[pluto9]

You quoted that dictionary definition in another comment:

>Government: the governing body of a nation, state, or community.

Just because something purports to be a dictionary doesn't mean its definitions are useful or correct. That's a poor definition because it covers a large number of things that nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club. This is much more precise (from Webster): "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it"

[manjushri]

The definition you cherry picked still seems to describe the management of Facebook. What specific part of the definition do you think excludes FB from being called a government?

>nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club.

FIFA manages football teams, and it describes itself as a government:

>The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA; French for "International Federation of Association Football") is an association which describes itself as an international governing body of association football, futsal, and beach soccer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA

[sattoshi]

Définitions seem like pointless pedantry to me. People in this thread are using the term "government" in an usual way. They are describing a system, and a government is a good simplification of what they mean.