If taxpayers never had to pay for our policing costs, we wouldn't need the police. If fat people stopped eating pies and getting diabetes, taxpayers would pay far less for the NHS. Same thing if people were a bit more careful and didn't have road accidents. The taxpayer pays the extra policing costs for a lot of things you may or may not approve of. We paid the extra policing costs at the demo in 1979 at which my friend Blair Peach was murdered (by a policeman). We pay the policing costs for English Defence League demos as well as for The People's March For Jobs (I was on that one) and for anti-invasion of Iraq protests (ditto). We pay the policing costs for crowd control outside Premier League football grounds on match days and at big pop music gigs. We paid the policing costs for Trump's state visit. We pay the policing costs for royal weddings.

Incidentally, and slightly beside the point I suppose, in many cases the police are at work anyway on these occasions and the extra costs may be a lot less than you think. The BBC did a fact-check piece on this recently.

You are indulging in a fair bit of whataboutery in this thread in order to defend Facebook. That defending is fine by me as long you accept that you can't expect to pick and choose which bits of our society's endeavours you happen to disapprove of in order to make that whataboutery defence yet retain credibility. The thing is, we live in a democratic society in which we are free to dissent, demonstrate (including sitting down on roads, at least until that paragon of wisdom Priti Patel makes it illegal) and partake in activities you may disapprove of but which are entirely legal, do unwise yet legal things at times (my red wine habit might well put me in hospital for a liver transplant one day* - that'll cost you!) and generally act like fallible human beings. I don't want fat people to stop eating pies if they don't want to. I might demur at the thought of a sensationally-rich family getting us to pay for policing their weddings, etc., but it's not illegal, it's a democracy and I'm probably in a minority in thinking that anyway. I'd rather have things this way than live like they did in Mao's China, the Soviet Union or North Korea, no?

All very philosophical, but back to the FB fray, eh?

*I'm not that bad, honest...