I have heard several stories about industry groups preferring government regulation to the status quo because game theory made it impossible to self-regulate effectively.

It makes sense to me, no agreement will hold if any one person can violate it with nothing to stop them.

One of the problems with the regulation debate framed in terms of "more vs. less" is that it's easy to assume increased regulation will fix what you consider bad and preserve what you consider good, or that deregulation will only cut pointless bureaucracy.

It's distressing that the support is for more regulation in general (which can be easily coopted to support stuff like this), rather than specific policies or outcomes.

It's a response to the conservative voice saying 'deregulate everything'. You first need to argue for regulation per se before you can argue for specific regulations. The nuanced position of 'regulation isn't inherently good, but this specific policy is' is blown away in the public debate by 'REGULATION BAD'.