it can't happen here! /s

It is already starting to happen here.[1][2] Western leaders and the establishment media are all in a furor about 'fake news' being shared on social media, how it is a problem those platforms need to 'solve' in order to maintain public order and make sure citizens are getting the right information.

That's exactly the justification the Chinese government uses.

[1]

“Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them.”

Merkel, 62, said the challenge for democrats was to “reach and inspire people — we must confront this phenomenon and if necessary, regulate it.”

She said she supported initiatives by her right-left coalition government to crack down on “hate speech” on social media in the face of what she said were “concerns about the stability of our familiar order”.

http://guardian.ng/news/merkel-warns-against-fake-news-drivi...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/17/barack-obama-f...

I can empathize with this sentiment but it is very self centered in a way. It basically comes down to "I hope Facebook doesn't build censorship tools because it might lead to my government using them, too bad for those >1B Chinese people who won't gain access to Facebook". I can accept that but please, get off the moral high horse (not you specifically).

What's the use of Chinese people getting access to Facebook if it's no better for speech than Weibo, WeChat or any of the other Chinese social network? I don't see any benefit at all here for the public. Not the Chinese public. Not the global public. The only benefits I see are for governments who wish to control and surveil their citizens, and Facebook. The governments get a nice automatic dissent control toolkit, and Facebook gets a nice payday from being able to enter the Chinese market.

I might sound like I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but I find it deeply scary that Facebook is applying its considerable engineering talent towards building censorship and monitoring at scale. Facebook has some of the smartest engineers in the industry as well computing power that only the richest governments can match, and they have a good shot at cracking the problem of doing efficient censorship at scale. China manages to scale its censorship by employing more and more people to censor. If Facebook builds a plug-in system that allows governments to censor automatically, then every country could censor like China, at a fraction of the cost.

The likelihood that Facebook or any other corporation cares about public good more than its own and its shareholders' bottom line is ludicrous. I'm not commenting on whether that's right. I'm saying that's how the system is built to work.

Why is Facebook so much better than the dozens of native Chinese social networks?

I think that's beside the point and couldn't answer because I don't use Facebook. I was trying to make the larger point that foreign companies refusing to comply with the Chinese censors is not necessarily a good thing for the people of China because it results in total and complete ban. I doubt that Facebook would be hugely successful in China but it would encourage competition and serve as an alternative.

There is a third option: that 1B Chinese are given uncensored access to FB.

By implementing censorship FB will make such option even less likely to happen in future.

That's inconceivable under any foreseeable circumstances.

The Chinese people are better off without a censored Facebook. Facebook itself is better off without censorship.