Facebook.cn: Facebook China to Welcome Censors

Facebook China Will Be Censor-Friendly

When Facebook launches in China, users of facebook.cn will have all their content open to Beijing's army of government censors. That's not all, though: if you friend someone who is using Facebook China, your material will become visible to Chinese censors as well.

Mind you, the US government can also spy on your Facebook dealings (delete that bong photo, stat, or at least un-tag yourself), but-- at least in theory-- needs a warrant to do so.

In China, government spying on citizens' web use is the norm, and no warning is required or given. This would apply to you, too, if you click "Okay" when friending a facebook.cn user.

Photos

Pandora and Facebook Team Up to Bring You Facebook Music Stream | Photo 05

see larger image

uploaded by Jordon Chiarelli

Facebook and Baidu

Facebook China will most likely be a partnership with Baidu, which is China's largest search engine.

Business Insider should really fix its headline, then: "Facebook Will Barge into China Whether the Chinese Government Wants It or Not" should read: "Facebook Will do as the Chinese Government Wants in Order to Enter China".

Google abandoned China because the restrictive nation was too small a slice of the search giant's profit pie to really matter. Facebook is seeing a vast, untapped field of advertising revenue, user privacy be damned.

This isn't really that surprising, since Facebook doesn't put a premium on user privacy even in the West.

Perhaps Facebook should have kept facebook.cn as a separate social network, but that's not what Mark Zuckerberg's company is going to do. This would be considered a major ethical compromise, if you still expect corporations to behave ethically.