Barack Obama traveled this week to Palo Alto, California for a cyber “town hall” staged inside the headquarters of Facebook and moderated by its 26-year-old founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerburg. The event was clearly supposed to be novel in concept, with the president talking about the future of the budget, technology and education on precisely the platform favored by the country’s future technologists and educators (and Democratic voters, come 2012).

Zuckerburg plucked from unoffensive questions posted on Facebook, and the whole event was streamed live on the White House’s Facebook page.

Pundits were, by and large, not quite sure what to make of the scene. Was this stagecraft? A serious discussion? An infomercial – and for whose benefit: Facebook’s or Obama’s? But prevalent was the sense that there seems to be something odd going on here in the burgeoning relationship between the White House and social networking giant.

Even as the president is leveraging Facebook as a speaking platform, legislators have begun to look critically at the site’s confusing – and constantly evolving – privacy practices. Washington’s passions tend to run in cycles, and all things related to consumer privacy are particularly hot right now, with Facebook sitting square at the center of Congress’ sights.

Last spring, Facebook officials riled Washington by declining to show up for a congressional hearing on global Internet freedom. Senators have since been sending the company nasty notes threatening oversight to protect consumer privacy. And this month bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate aimed at giving consumers more power over their personal information on sites like Facebook.

Of course, none of these privacy issues came up during Obama’s town hall, following the perverse political logic that the center of a storm is in fact the worst place to even mention its existence.

Also unmentioned was another rift about explode between the world’s most ambitious social networking site and Congress: Facebook’s stance on free speech as it eyes a move into China.

Wednesday, the day of the townhall, the Wall Street Journal published an article –“Facebook Seeking Friends in the Beltway” – on the lobbying efforts that will be part of any politically sensitive international expansion behind the Great Firewall. Facebook appears to be plotting the move at the worst time, as China cracks down all the harder on dissidents out of fear of an Arab-style uprising.

So how would Facebook curry favor with Chinese authorities to gain access?

“Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others,” one of the company’s lobbyists told the Journal. “We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before.”

This last headline-ready sound bite – “too much, maybe, free speech” – immediately shot around the blogosphere. Its terribly inarticulate language reinforced the idea that a twenty-something lobbyist for Facebook probably has no business setting policy on a principle as weighty as free speech. (‘Nothing says, “I am likely to make a statement that does not represent me or my company well,” like “I am 25-years old — and male,”’ mocked a Washington Post columnist.)

Rumors for the last several weeks have suggested that the president’s close friend and former spokesman, Robert Gibbs, was headed to Facebook to help with its communications (and clearly the company will need a savvier – and older – Washington insider to navigate what’s ahead). But the Wall Street Journal reported that deal now appears to have fallen through.

That may be best for the White House anyway. A former high-ranking aide helping Facebook make the case for acquiescing to China would only further confuse the relationship between the country’s president and one of its most influential tech companies. There are, after all, several different kinds of “friends” on Facebook – from the professional acquaintance to the late-night drinking buddy.