Regulation is exactly what large corporations want. Regulation prevents competition from ever getting started.
What's an extra £30 million a year for regulatory compliance to someone like FB, or Google, or any billion dollar corp? It's literally zero. Nothing at all. The (insignificant) cost of doing business.
For a startup? It's certain death right at the idea stage...
I would put money on FB actually helping government draft regulations _against_ FB themselves knowing that they won't be financially affected by them and that they will help kill any potential competition from ever getting started.
Whether or not you consider that bad depends on how much you value progress over stability. Stability often seems fine for the first decade or too, until one day you pause to wonder why you’re still connecting to the internet using acoustic coupler modems, or paying hundreds of dollars per month for insulin.
However, for some things, like website I visit on the internet, the regulation should be all but nonexistent (for the most part, there are likely some things like child porn and generally illegal stuff that should be covered).
And I'm in Scotland, not the US
Nowadays, it seems that common people are mostly convinced by the rich to vote against their own interest.
I don't believe that. Taking the building site example, I'd rather work on one that's got a bunch of site posters up and does all the right safety stuff than one ran by a bunch of cowboys with no regard for my safety...
> Nowadays, it seems that common people are mostly convinced by the rich to vote against their own interest.
Perhaps, but the rich have control over the propaganda machines like social media and MSM so it's no wonder people are convinced that they're doing the right thing.
It does go hand-in-hand with the failed thinking of trickle-down economics: In other words, conservatives use this talking point. I think it is louder in the US simply because the trust in government that you would find in, say, Norway simply doesn't exist and you get a few more "regulation in print only" there, it seems.
And of course some regulations limit who does some things, but in a lot of cases, we probably wouldn't want folks that refuse to follow regulations - particularly when they deal with health and safety.
Every law creates and restricts freedom. Food safety laws restricts the freedom of restaurants: need to clean kitchen, remove all the cockroaches etc., but gives the people the freedom to eat food everywhere without getting sick.
More regulations on FB restricts its freedom to misuse the attention of the population to make more money, but also gives citizens the freedom to consume less fake news.
These days you can't take a crap without a license...
It's easy, all you need to do is spot the term "Russiagate", in this case the "gate" is being used to suggest that Russian influence in American politics is a fake news story (which it definitely isn't, see Muller report)
It basically talks about how Sussman's work on the Alfa Bank story (about how there was a relationship between Trump and a Russian Bank) was accused of fabrication and was lead by the Clinton campaign, as described by research from the FBI. (You can read the judicial document in its original form here: https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1433511/downl...) Although the title is quite polemical and should have been toned down if it were to adhere to HN standards, I think it is a valuable news story and shouldn't be shrugged off as just "fake news".
Obviously when there are incentives for people to hide the truth, it's going to be difficult to find citations.
It is broadly believed within the corporate sphere that companies do this. There is even a term called 'regulatory capture'. Why else would they hire lobbyists?
Facebook wants regulation for itself to kick the ladder down for future competitors, the current "whistleblowers" want it for FB because of personal idelogical leanings toward modern identity politics, the legacy media corporations want regulation applied to FB hoping that it will somehow save the former's outdated business model and the Biden administration wants it in order to manufacture consent in the face of falling popularity ratings and to keep those pesky allegations of election fraud down (except for their own allegations against the opponent).