It's a very slippery slope. Cannot wait for the next elections where any candidates with politically "wrong" ideas will see their pages silently being discarded or randomly hidden from timelines without warnings.
I'm not sympathetic at all to FB overall, but I am sympathetic here.
Zuck would definitely prefer to not be in the business of moderating content.
They've created a kind of 'internet platform' and by virtue of their situation, they're kind of forced to do this.
And there is - no - solution.
Every nation has different laws, different thresholds for various kinds of activity, and I suggest most of what FB 'takes down' is probably technically legal, but just beyond what they would like to do.
They are also under considerable pressure from many countries to act explicitly in some cases. I'm not familiar with this Indian/Iranian situation, but it very well could be that Indian government officials leaned on them to do it. The less transparency there is, the more there is political interference in business, the more they have no choice: "We don't like Iran, so stop all this pro-Iran stuff in our country or we shut you down" type threats.
And no doubt the US gov. has their interests as well, both on the 'local petty stuff' (i.e. law enforcement) to 'strategic stuff' (i.e. we don't like Iran either, stop their propaganda).
I do however think that FB will actually try to do the right thing, I think it's just beyond their capability.
I don't think Zuck is trying to promote his view of the world in the filtering. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is 'an information architectural nightmare' - not really a political thing.
This could be an existential crisis for FB, as this happens more and more, they'll be expected to moderate 'everything' and then the business becomes infeasible.
Various pages belonging to the main Libertarian party ("Liberal Democratic Party") started getting shutdown[0] about a month before elections.
[0] https://www.facebook.com/davidlimbrickldp/posts/209817440381...
If Facebook has issues with commenters, then those commenters should be punished.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/may...
when your private internet provider starts to shut you down for your stupid ideas, or your private bank denies you service lets see how you feel then. and to act like the government does not already regulate the hell out of private business is just a foolish position.
I dislike Facebook but for a lot of people it became part of their life and some information is now only available on Facebook.
As a public utility they should be regulated on what they are allow to restrict from their users.
So what? World of Warcraft became a part of a lot of people's lives, does that mean WoW should be a utility?