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Re:Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful? by vinceguidry on Thursday July 12, 2018 @11:07AM (#17515359)
While this may be true, there's no guarantee that the government can do the job better. The slow ratchet of regulation is what's right for the industry at the present moment.
Re:Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful? by white-flame on Thursday July 12, 2018 @12:41PM (#17516317)
Certainly part of this is a cultural problem, which is part complacency and part ignorance as to what's actually going on. Laws aren't going to necessarily change that, but they can step in as a last resort when culture doesn't end up addressing fundamental problems of social health or rights issues.

The social media companies effectively propagandize ordinary communication for whatever's most profitable, and the effects can be individually subtle, with large overall effect. While this tends to be accepted at the for-profit media creation level, it seems quite inappropriate and socially unhealthy to apply these to personal communication on social media, because the cultural buy-in to these sorts of things means individuals put themselves into monopolized systems.

Social media is very new in the grand scheme of things, and there are things to figure out. Certainly education on these topics and their effects is important, and possibly more declarations of rights (as opposed to specifically prescriptive regulations) of people's personal communications might be in order.