FB has repeatedly stated that they don't want to be the arbiter of what speech is and is not allowed on their service. It's a huge burden in their eyes to have to make and enforce policy, especially in a competitive landscape where other companies may reach different conclusions.

FB would love for the US gov to step in and lay out clear guidelines about user generated content that would be applied universally to them and all their competitors.

I doubt FB would want a government telling them what to do. I mean thanks to the GDPR on the one end and Apple on the other, they really had to tone down the gathering of their primary source of income - user data. They would not have done those voluntarily. And I'm convinced they have teams working full time on how to circumvent these rules.

Censor "wrong-think" without blame and create a moat that smaller players will have a hard time crossing. Win-win.

>I doubt FB would want a government telling them what to do. I mean thanks to the GDPR on the one end and Apple on the other, they really had to tone down the gathering of their primary source of income - user data.

you're assuming the regulations would revolve around privacy/tracking. I think politicians/the public care far less about that, and more about censorship/"destroying democracy" or whatever.

facebook wants to play the role of poor tech company oppressed by regulation, but once social media reforms are legislated they’ll be the only company that can afford compliance.

Two words: regulatory capture.

Well, the point of all this is for Facebook to censor a lot more stuff than it does now. Seems plausible to me that Zuckerberg wants that too, but to retain the appearance of having his hands tied by regulation.