BEIJING — "Je suis Charlie," Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote as he made a passionate defense of free speech this month, arguing that extremists would never be able to silence other voices and opinions on his social media platform.

But Tibetan writer and dissident Tsering Woeser says her experience with Facebook tells a different story, after the video of a Tibetan self-immolation was deleted and a fellow dissident’s account temporarily suspended last month. Zuckerberg, Woeser wrote, is “not exactly being honest about defending freedom of expression,” as he tries to make more money by getting a block on his service lifted in China.

Zuckerberg won fans when he showed off his Mandarin skills on a visit to Beijing last October, but subsequently came in for criticism when China’s Internet czar, Lu Wei, visited Facebook’s Silicon Valley offices. The two men were photographed laughing together, with a copy of a new book by Chinese President Xi Jinping displayed on Zuckerberg’s desk. Facebook’s CEO was reported to have told a Chinese news site that he had read the book and bought copies for colleagues because he “wanted them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

The question of how far Zuckerberg was ready to go to curry favor with the Communist Party resurfaced late last month, when Woeser posted a disturbing video of a Tibetan monk setting himself alight outside a police station in protest at Chinese rule, only to have it deleted by a Facebook administrator, “because it didn’t meet community standards.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/15/no-mark-zuckerberg-you-are-not-charlie-argues-tibetan-writer/