There's a really tricky legal dance going on here. The government cannot directly censor Facebook, and Facebook knows that. The government, knowing it can't directly censor Facebook, instead tries to pressure/threaten Facebook to censor itself.
Facebook responds by playing innocent and saying "you know, we'd really rather you just set the rules for us so they're "fair" (and so we don't piss off our members), knowing full well that the government cannot do exactly what Facebook is asking it to do.
Facebook sucks, but I actually think they're playing this decently. It would be much worse for us if Facebook just did all the censorship on its own, because it would be harder to challenge legally. "Asking" the government to censor them is a convoluted legal way of telling the government to F.O..
I think the whole ‘whistleblower’ farce was set up to create ‘rules’ that could be deployed internet-wide to suppress conservative sites and platforms.
They are taking all the views and new users and frolicking on-line without twitter-like censorship.
It is indeed tricky to understand what is going on here with Facebook. We know Facebook is an incredibly ‘woke’ organization and would they pursue a campaign like this, when they really don’t need to? Heck, they can ban the President of the United States with nary the bat of an eyelash. We know they shadow ban accounts until they can fully ban them based on some vague TOS community guidelines.
My account was hacked a little over a month ago and porn posted overnight. The algorithm caught it and shut it down. Yay, right? Wrong. It shutdown my personal Facebook, my business page, my groups, and my business Instagram! Everything brought to a screeching halt. And there is no one to help you from Facebook customer service, because it doesn’t exist. You cannot pick up the phone and call someone, there’s no one to email either. The most frustrating part? Facebook sent emails acknowledging the hack asking to change me to change my password, but gee...batman I was in bed asleep when all this was happening.
Facebook just yesterday finally refunded my advertising fees as they ran my advertisement even after shutting my accounts down. So when people say, ‘you can’t complain because it is a free platform’ actually ...no it isn’t. Someone is paying for it to exist and it comes from their customers who are the advertisers/businesses. Being shutdown/banned/jailed over a hacked account and taking weeks to resolve causes great harm to the small business owner. Lost revenues to start with, lost SEO placement in search engines, lost social credit in potential customer minds. Especially in the case of a business who has used Facebook without incident or violation for over 10 years.
Lucky for me I did maintain an email list of clients and members to my business pages. It will take some time to reset things, but we are in the process of moving everything over to Mighty Networks as a private enterprise. No data tracking, no advertisements, no trolls, no big tech spyware.
The biggest thing I am missing from Facebook it I was a very active member of a professional group. That is lost. But as I keep asking God for wisdom to deal with this change, I know there is going to be another door that opens to something better.
So, while you view the whistleblower as a set-up to government censorship, I actually do not quite see it that way. What I do see it as...an interesting factoid that the whistleblower is complaining that Facebook isn’t ‘woke’ enough! Now, that is mind-blowing. Woke isn’t woke enough for these activist trained youngsters.
Lastly, there is still a lingering legal matter hanging out there for Facebook.
Facebook again asks judge to dismiss U.S. lawsuit to force sale of Instagram, WhatsApp
https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-again-asks-judge-dismiss-us-lawsuit-force-sale-instagram-whatsapp-2021-10-04/
WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) asked a judge on Monday to dismiss the U.S. government’s revised antitrust case that seeks to force the social media giant to sell Instagram and WhatsApp.