agreed. nothing novel about people lying to convince other people to do something.

what’s novel is the centralized nature of social media (in terms of # of people reached from a single source) and the fact that some incredibly wealthy companies control these sources and face an existential risk if their platforms are used to create enough civil unrest that whoever ends up controlling the government is convinced that these companies are too dangerous to leave unregulated.

Exactly. These companies want to avoid government regulation / oversight. They are taking proactive actions to lessen the blame that would be assigned to them and thus (hopefully) avoid future regulatory action.

The problem I see is that they are walking directly in to oversight through their concerted actions. They are going to end up being labeled public utilities (identity, max comm, public market have already been labeled so).

At this point wouldn't that be better? They're used as such.

I am not saying it is better or worse, but I would say not one of them wants to be regulated as such. So they are setting themselves up for a result they are trying to avoid. Perhaps it is unavoidable, and actually for the better.