Has censorship on Facebook gone too far?

In late December 2014, Russian dissidents launched a Facebook event page to promote a January rally for opponents of Vladimir Putin. But when Russia’s Internet monitor, Roskomnadzor, requested that the page be taken down, Facebook swiftly complied.

Facebook has placated the Russian leadership before. In the first half of 2014, in fact, the social network erased content at the government’s urging 29 times — a fourfold increase over the same period in 2013. Nor is Russia the only site of such censorship. In 2014, Facebook purged content in both Turkey and Pakistan roughly 1,800 times—more than five times per day in each country.