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Comment by max76 | Hacker News Reader

I'm disappointed that Bloomberg published an article that points out all of the problems with unregulated social media but doesn't purpose specific regulations that could be helpful for most of the problems they point out.

What can the goverment do to help prevent foreign interference with domestic elections via social media? If Facebook is a natural monopoly what regulations would make it's use more fair? They suggest a user's bill of rights, but only one item that would fit in it. A bill of rights naturally would include multiple items. To make matters worse the ToS lets users know how their data might be used which is the only item suggested for the user's bill of rights.

All companies in the United States are subject to a barrage of regulations. In my opinion some are good and some aren't. Purposing more regulations without the details of what those regulations are is like a blank check.

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I think it's mostly supposed to be notable because it's a well known Harvard law prof who served in the Obama admin publicly changing his mind.

It's a short opinion declaration piece by design.

Though, I agree it would've been better with more detailed advocacy.

The thing is that deciding how to regulate social media is extremely difficult. So someone arguing for such regulation can't begin by saying what they want. They have to take a broad "it should be regulated" "look how terrible, can't we DO SOMETHING??" sort of approach. Then argue regulation isn't bad by looking at different examples.

Only once there's a huge ground swell can specific proposals be laid down.

But all this is makes it sound like a giant power grab. And yes, that's what I'd call it. Not because all regulation is bad but because this particular thing is far outside the purview of the Federal Government.

I think I'd start with forcing advertising transparency on any social network (and probably search engines too -- actually, make that any site with advertising).

And then force any company paying for political advertising to list every single one of their donors publicly. Chuck an unlimited personal liability clause in there for the company directors, so they can't just wind the company up to avoid any fines.

It isn't an article, it is an op-ed. But I agree, it is low quality.

I would consider op-ed to be a subset of articles. Is that incorrect?

Not really, it isn't a Bloomberg article. Sure, if you want to be pedantic and look up the definition of article, you'll disagree.

But within the context of newspapers and op-eds, you need to treat them separately.

Agreed, contributing to the discussion by only elaborating on problems grows only the vacuum and makes it easier for ANY solution to slide on in.

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