[noobhacker]

Facebook, as a business, is primarily interested in making money and would love to avoid all these messy issues regarding what to censor so that it can focus on selling ads.

Therefore, FB would love to have a legitimate external authority, e.g. the government, mandating what's allowed or not. Unfortunately, no one is willing to do that dirty work, and thus forcing Facebook to do it themselves.

(Granted, I've simplified the matter quite a bit here by saying "Facebook, as a business". Facebook is also a collection of individual employees who have their own beliefs and do shape FB in their image.)

[zanethomas]

Who's forcing Facebook to engage in censorship in the first place? Why don't they just go on about the business of making money? They are immune from defamation/libel/slander so where's the issue?

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

They are not immune from boycotts like the one they are currently facing. That's why they are censoring certain types of content, because their advertisers don't want to be associated with it.

[throwaway1777]

Absolutely. Also user base outrage. At some point if enough people quit FB it would be a problem because advertisers need an audience. So far the numbers show it hasn’t happened despite all the posts on hacker news about it, but it’s a concern.