What If Regulating Facebook Fails?

" Significantly smaller services like Reddit, with only about 430 million users, do a much better job these days (at least since 2020, when Reddit abandoned its naive commitment to radical free speech and encouraged strong community content-moderation techniques, banning some major subreddits that encouraged hatred)."

Never read Wired seriously. They are not your friend. They do not have your interests in mind.

This whole article is talking past the sale. What if regulating DOESN'T fail, mmm? What then? And why is Wired so eager to get us to imagine a world where it does?

Everyone said anti-trust and other actions against tech monopolies were impossible, never gonna happen. Then enough people got pissed off, politicians smelled an opportunity, and suddenly there were lawsuits and talk of serious legislation.

Everything's impossible until it isn't. There's a whole hell of a lot still in the pipe for Facebook and their ilk. Let's see where it goes. And if it isn't enough, I suspect people will continue to get angry, and that anger will find another outlet. You can make enemies. You can even make a lot of enemies. But you can't make enemies of nearly everyone. Sooner or later that kind of behavior has consequences.

The article gives a nice overview of the possible solutions for regulating Facebook, but it is not very optimistic.

I guess the EU is still our best hope here.