It must be hard for a company with its finger on the pulse of every narcissistic teeny-bopper desperate for validation by “likes” to have to figure out a stance to take with regard to grown-up issues. After all, if they fail to cater to the feelz of their customers, they might all run away to the next shiny thing and leave Mark Zuckerberg feeling awful about dropping out of Harvard.

What then to do when asked about the federal revenge porn law that Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) has been announcing, over and over, is coming?

Facebook is backing the criminalization of so-called revenge porn but has yet to take a public position on broader draft legislation in Congress.

So you’re all in for criminalizing it? Or not?

“I haven’t seen the federal legislation, so I am loath to comment on the federal legislation,” [Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety] told reporters after a presentation about Facebook’s projects and products dedicated to enhancing the “social good.”

Well, that’s a bit confusing.  It’s perfectly fair to take a wait and see attitude before backing a law, but then, what’s with the endorsement of criminalizing speech in a vacuum?

“We do not tolerate revenge porn on Facebook, and we have reporting folks that do allow people to report and to take it down, and we do support the criminalization for people who post that non-consensual content,” she said.

That Facebook, a private entity, chooses not to tolerate revenge porn, however they choose to define it, is entirely up to them. Hey, it’s their platform, and they get to allow whatever they want to allow because Facebook isn’t the government, much as they may secretly think they are.

But when they talk about criminalization, the nuance of this statement becomes important.  They’re for it, but “for people who post that non-consensual content.”

“I think we really focus in on the people who are actually sharing those images without the consent of another person and on that behavior,” she added at another point.

Boom.  What Davis is saying, even if she’s being a little crafty, is that they are all for criminalizing revenge porn, but just not Facebook.  And that, folks, is the entire point of Speier’s federal anti-revenge porn crime.

The tentatively titled Intimate Privacy Protection Act, as described, would make posting revenge porn a federal crime and would put companies such as Google, Facebook and other social media sites on the hook if they do not promptly remove the photos when asked.

The legislation would not target sites when they are unaware the content has been posted. It would also contain public interest and other exemptions, after civil liberties groups raised concerns about similar state laws that have been successfully challenged in court because of First Amendment concerns.

There would be no purpose to a federal revenge porn crime other than to circumvent the protections of the safe harbor provision of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which insulates websites from culpability for the actions of people who upload to them.

For those with a cynical bent, this might explain a lot of the weirdness happening with Big Tech getting in bed with every SJW cause that threatens to make them the feelz police.

A number of major tech companies, including Facebook, have dedicated staff to responding to takedown requests for revenge porn and other abuse online.

Facebook, along with Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, Tumblr and Yahoo, recently worked with California’s attorney general to outline a series of best practices to remove the content.

After all, the difference between the horrible revenge porn garbage held up as examples of why a new crime is needed and the protected speech that will go down with it, or be chilled because of it, doesn’t concern Big Tech at all. They don’t really love your speech, or at least not nearly as much as they love their continued sources of revenue, and if they’re lucky, their profit.

In contrast to their self-serving support for criminalizing speech that includes the protected with the horrible, their direct ancestor, Tim Berners-Lee, isn’t finding Facebook’s gutless turn to cynicism funny.

And it’s a little something Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the very thing Facebook’s been trying to bastardize, has been thinking a little about. When recently asked to comment on the recent Facebook fracas, Berners-Lee channeled Nancy Reagan and argued that it’s best to just say no:

“In the particular case of somebody who’s offering … something which is branded internet, it’s not internet, then you just say no. No it isn’t free, no it isn’t in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something … [Only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”

Why must you hate the poor so, Tim Berners-Lee? Why? Isn’t lemonade with a little bit of dead otter in it better than no lemonade at all? Etc.

While Berners-Lee’s views rip Facebook’s rationalization for offering free internet to the poor with the condition that it’s Facebook’s self-serving version of “internet,” the point applies as well to its self-serving applause of stifling speech by creating a new crime, with the condition that it doesn’t apply to Facebook.

But then, if it doesn’t apply to Facebook, then there is no point to a federal revenge porn crime.  After all, there are already state laws to criminalize the same conduct, which already applies to the people who upload the content.

And one last dink in the story that’s worthy of note.

It would also contain public interest and other exemptions, after civil liberties groups raised concerns about similar state laws that have been successfully challenged in court because of First Amendment concerns.

Those “exemptions” only scratch the surface of what’s wrong with this ill-conceived law.  And, much as I hate to say so, civil liberties groups are not in a position to bargain away the First Amendment, because they kinda hate the really bad revenge porn too.

For that matter, neither is Facebook, although Facebook at least comes upon their self-serving cynicism honestly, trying to prevent Zuckerberg from crying.  As for Berners-Lee, he can cry all he wants as far as Facebook is concerned. Jackie Speier, too.