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Comment by sevensor | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean to say you anticipate Facebook publicly stating that they refuse to comply with the law? I don't think that's liable to last very long in any country where they have a physical presence.

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A more likely outcome is that while FB gives a "soft" finger to the government by questioning the law, anti-government disinformation magically accelerates and floods Facebook, causing the formerly loyal citizens to believe that the government is controlled by shadowy Jewish financiers, and that the government's attacks on FB are an attempt to suppress this vital free speech, &c.

Sigh.

I'm old enough to remember when saying something like this earned you a free tinfoil hat and the condemnation of your saner friends.

to be fair, that still sounds insane to me

They don't need to do anything as explicit as that. They can wield their vast power in much subtler ways - promoting competing political content, blackouts, etc.

Control the feed, control the people. Politicians will have to fall in line.

Exactly, which is why I think a literal flipping of the bird to authority is beyond pointless from FB's perspective. They can continue to work contrary to the interests of the state with a wink and a nod.

More to the point, they have a legal entity in the UK:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310

NB Pretty normal for a multinational to have at least one (and sometimes many) legal entities in each country where it has physical operations (offices, employees etc.).

That's a fair point. I emphasized physical presence because governments exert their power within a physical space that they control. If you defy the power of the state within its own territory, you're in for a bad time. But you're right that there's no need for it to come to guns and muscle when their ability to make money depends on their compliance with local laws.

No, I don't see this happening any time soon. But it isn't outside the realm of possibility that something could indeed happen, possibly before the turn of the next century.

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