The Risk Makers: The nuclear, auto, and food industries

Long (~30pp printed) but rewarding.

I'm not really sure there is a viable prevention strategy here. The problem of social networks is the problem of human nature multiplied by technology, and the regulatory fixes we're likely to try seem either quaint or dystopian.

The level of oversight and regulation the nuclear, auto, and food industries operate under would be considered crippling in a consumer-facing social network space. Batya Friedman (whose opinion I already respected) alludes to this in the article. If these companies need an impact study to be done and an appointed panel to sign off on new features, they'll just lose out to competing foreign products without that oversight. My government can prevent me from buying an unsafe foreign car, but at present they don't generally stop me from signing up for unsafe foreign social networks. I'm sure I don't want them to get into that practice, either.

I ask myself whether I would want the Trump administration overseeing social networks, and by extension do I want an indeterminate future administration to have that role either? Probably not, nor do I believe any committee or panel would be truly above the reach of politics.

In any case, risk management begins by assuming risks are not entirely preventable, so quick and effective mitigation should be part of any robust solution. Though it may prevent some disasters, I'm skeptical whether more bureaucratic oversight helps quickly address them when they arise. There's even reason for me to think that social media is complex and unique enough from nuclear, auto, and food that the existing oversight model may not even be useful if extended into this space.

In short, I am not confident in the government's ability to come up with something new and brilliant enough to regulate this space effectively.

I think this is the quote that sums up the problem for me:

> “We may decide we’re not wise enough for certain kinds of tools, or certain kinds of companies"