Funnily enough if you asked certain parts of the U.S govt it's very likely they would say: "obey local laws, just make sure you keep operating". Facebook can p

Funnily enough if you asked certain parts of the U.S govt it's very likely they would say: "obey local laws, just make sure you keep operating". Facebook can provide a valuable "window" for figuring out what's going on inside a country, will have some (probably small?) direct intelligence value, and provides a potential (not proven...) platform for influence operations. We can only speculate on _exactly_ how friendly Facebook is with the three letter agencies but they are very unlikely to be "estranged". In-Q-Tel know potential when they see it. The behaviour of U.S. platforms overseas tends to make more sense if you ignore U.S. values for a moment and consider U.S. _interests_. The alternative is of course replacement by a homegrown service or, more likely, one from a rival nation. There's no outcome where human rights win.