First, writing off China isn't that easy. It's a big market and a growth market. Soon it will be the clear number 1. Opting out of china is part way to opting o

First, writing off China isn't that easy. It's a big market and a growth market. Soon it will be the clear number 1. Opting out of china is part way to opting out of being a global business. 2nd is the nature of the best online businesses. The big online cash cows operate on market/niche dominance. A search engine with 5% of Google's search volume does not generate 5% of Google's revenue. Far from it. A social network with 5% of the people you know is a totally different beast to Facebook. An operating system (eg Android) either has a large market share, or it does not have an ecosystem. Size, market share and such are relevant to these businessess well beyond the simple "economies of scale" rationale. They are not going sacrifice this for "don't be evil." 3rd is that by denying governments, Google & FB would be saying "we're allowed but you aren't." FB & Google track and use all sorts of customer data for their own commercial reasons. If it is a privacy violation for the Chinese/US government to see/use this data, why is it OK for Google & FB to use this data? FB decides who should see which article. This is done algorithmically, optimizing for FBs goals. "Old media" had a code of journalistic ethical guidelines, justifying content decisions. FB does not. Why is it OK to widely circulate a (for example) totally false article in order to achieve FBs commercial goals, but not to achieve the Chinese governments "societal harmony" goals? The NYT could answer that question. They'd have journalistic ethic reasons for not allowing governments to influence content. FB can't. It doesn't. Btw, what is true for China is true for other countries too with variations and degrees.