> Ok so what’s the solution? Is the only other option no regulation and accepting the fact that what Cambridge Analytica did is going to be the way things are done from now on? Just wondering what the constructive path for advocacy is now.

A little antitrust enforcement certainly wouldn't hurt -- stop letting Facebook buy its competitors. More competition would do two things. First, less people on each network, so less impact for each mistake. Second, more competition creates market pressure. It's much more problematic for Facebook to be able to do this and get away with it because they have a monopoly and users have no alternative, than for them to do this and lose all their users to a vibrant competitive marketplace, serving as a lesson to anyone who would do the same thing.

It also wouldn't hurt if the government would just overtly support decentralized systems. The internet itself, The Tor Project and most of the other decentralized technologies we have all came out of government research grants. Which we don't do nearly as much as we used to in this space.

We could also roll back some of the existing bad laws -- like SESTA -- that are already making it harder for small players to compete.