If Facebook and Zuckerberg personally did not profit from such acidic and destructive kind of free speech they would fix that pronto, it's as simple as that and it appears fruitless to me to spend a lot of words to counterargue them without considering this. Karl Popper would be going nuts by now were he alive today, I'm afraid.
Unfortunately, I do not think it is a coincidence that the choices Facebook makes are the ones that allow the most content — the fuel for the Facebook engine — to remain in the system. I do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook’s choices align with the ones that require the least amount of resources, and the choices that outsource important aspects to third parties. I do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook’s choices appease those in power who have made misinformation, blatant racism, and inciting violence part of their platform. Facebook says, and may even believe, that it is on the side of free speech. In fact, it has put itself on the side of profit and cowardice.
This seems to me like the obvious answer. Zuckerberg has no problem censoring nudity...but that threatens his advertising revenue so it doesn't raise any concerns and he doesn't have to pretend to care about "free speech". They have a lot of "community standards" that they don't mind censoring ... but all of them threaten advertising dollars.
Kara Swisher has said it again and again. The best thing for a company to do business-wise is to ban Trump off their platform after the events of the last week.
I’m twisting her words because she heavily disagrees with Facebook, and I want to respect that, but this is a non-argument if you actually take a business perspective on it.
