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>Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government? This argument, if applied strictly, would allow any government to meddle in the affairs (say, influencing elections) of any other government simply by establishing ostensibly private companies that'd perform to their wishes, whether overtly or secretly. That being anti-democratic, there's clear need for limiting actions of private companies. While I am against compelling speech, I do not consider Facebook a newspaper publishing its own editorial content, but rather a platform for publishing third-party content. In fact, posts on Facebook are clearly attributed to the author, which, with minor exceptions, is not Facebook itself. On the other hand, official communications of Facebook are marked as such and clearly delineated from users' posts. Thus preventing Facebook from deleting posts (i.e., forcing them to let posts remain) would amount to preventing them from performing (the seemingly arbitrary and capricious) censorship, rater than compelling them to speak. For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content must be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market. |
The only problem is, since the internet is free and open, whether Facebook operates as a legal entity in a particular country or not, doesn't prevent internet users from that country to access the services. And Facebook doesn't have any obligations to ban IP ranges from that country. So, it's the country's responsibility to ban traffic to Facebook.