I have been musing over why Zuckerberg is having to go before congress. Everyone is under the idea that Zuckerberg owns facebook, and that he has a right to control the content on it.

Except that this is wrong. He does not own facebook. Facebook is a publicly traded company now. The shareholders own facebook. This means that facebook has to follow rules. It has to follow the rules of governance that it created when it became an IPO, or else. It also has to follow rules and policies set up by the SEC.

Looking back on facebook's history, we can see that there have been plenty of offers to buy it in the past from some really rich, business savoy people. Many of these people where venture capitalists that paid into it early, and as a result got a lot of shares in facebook.

I believe that these guys have been biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to remove zuckerberg and take over facebook for themselves. They have been waiting for him to make a stupid mistake, and then pounce.

That stupid mistake was editing Conservative leaning content.

Facebook claims to be an open platform. This is part of what they tell investors. As a result, censoring any content in mass would violate this open platform claim. Now that they have enough evidence of him doing this, they can not only fine him, but send him to jail and put someone else in charge of facebook.

That person will probably be one of the big government friendly venture capitalists that paid early into it.