Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

Really what?

> Something that a poor person has access to as well

I doubt this. When the other side has orders of magnitude more money than you, you don't have access to protection by the legal system - this is the very reason why and how, for example, patent trolls stay in business.

> and in fact the utilization of such could allow them to come out of poverty

You're talking about trickle-down effect, I guess? That's been proven false. When all the employers pay only the least they have to, you won't ever get out of poverty. What could help is strikes, but union busting has taken care of that "problem" for the employers.

> it isn't a replacement for a hierarchy built on competence

Competence does not seem to be rewarded as much as it was in ye olde times. Look at who is in government right now: certainly not the experts that the US needs, and in Europe the situation doesn't look much better...

(for the record, given your question above: I have not downvoted you)

FB's openness has begat an unmanageable monster that is going to require a lot of imagination and brainpower to dial down. This is part of what killed MySpace.

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet.

So when you write something at facebook you ask a company to host your story under their domain. And as the company is held responsible for what they host, they have to review everything before publishing it.

When we wrote forum posts back in the day, it was no different. If the forum operator didn't like what you wrote, he just deleted your post. So if you wanted to post something nobody wanted on his website you just made your own website.

And so it is today. Unless you want to periodically write hate posts you should be able to find a web hoster or ISP to share your opinion with the world. The only misconception is that because facebook is such a large 'forum', everybody thinks it cuts his right of free speech when facebook does not want to host his opinion.

Yes, I know that many people use facebook as their primary means of communication and that therefore their channel to the world is 'censored'. And Actually I have no simple solution to this problem, as my solution would involve to not use facebook in the first place.

So I think there is a difference between a moderated facebook 'forum' and a censored internet, which some countries have and which is a real danger to the freedom of speech.