"Most sectors of the economy are a conspiracy between the big incumbents and their punitive regulators," venture capitalist and software engineer Marc Andreessen tells Reason this month (page 48). Asked to identify pockets of relative freedom and competition, he offers what he calls "the cynical answer": There's still innovation "in the spaces that don't matter. Anybody can bring a new toy to market. Anybody can open a restaurant."
Social media is the latest industry to transition from a free, fun space that "doesn't matter" to a sector the state deems too important to be left to the market. At first, the justifications for intervention were numerous and rapidly shifting: Early calls to regulate or break up Facebook and Twitter were often framed as concerns about exclusion from speech in the public square or the spread of misinformation. (Largely absent from this argument was any acknowledgment that these are private companies or that, as it turns out, the government was pressuring those companies to do some of the very exclusions and misinformation peddling that the government promised to remedy.) Another strong contender for concern was the sheer size of the firms, which could open the door for antitrust action. And then there's the ongoing debate over whether the costs to teen mental health are so high and age verification so difficult that perhaps access to social media should be limited or eliminated for everyone.
