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It's ridiculous to think that regulation is any sort of solution. It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining exam

It's ridiculous to think that regulation is any sort of solution. It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) Someone is always going to be thinking about the bottom line, but come on now. Facebook isn't the only internet business that the russians used to influence people. Have you looked at reddit over the last 3 years? Any and every site with influence is going to get gamed by every government who has the bandwidth to play ball. You can't regulate your way around that. Look at how the Trump administration is currently using Twitter. Is that proper? no, but it's great for Twitter. Should they refuse to service him? Governments shouldn't be looked to for solutions. Government is TERRIBLE at solving any problems. If change is required or desired, you go about making change happen the good old fashioned way - by getting others to agree with you.

Bartweiss 9y ago
> It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) The recent "regulate Facebook" furor (as seen near-daily at the NYT) seems to feed into a larger pattern of this. There are a lot of establishment-friendly, technocratic people who don't seem to have adjusted their worldviews to accommodate the last ~18 months. These are people who argued over the last eight years that we need the trustworthy, knowledgeable parts of government (roughly defined as "executive branch bureaucracies") to rein in the excesses of productive-yet-reckless businesses. And then Trump became president and appointed a string of regulatory heads who support entrenched businesses and oppose the existence of their own departments. And seemingly, no one noticed. Whether or not Tom Wheeler and Michelle Lee were qualified to regulate the tech sector, Ajit Pai and Andrei Iancu aren't. My opinions on regulation are not strictly libertarian. But I'm absolutely baffled by watching left-leaning voices work their hardest to empower grossly incompetent regulators who disagree with all of their goals.

Bartweiss 9y ago

> It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) The recent "regulate Facebook" furor (as seen near-daily at the NYT) seems to feed into a larger pattern of this. There are a lot of establishment-friendly, technocratic people who don't seem to have adjusted their worldviews to accommodate the last ~18 months. These are people who argued over the last eight years that we need the trustworthy, knowledgeable parts of government (roughly defined as "executive branch bureaucracies") to rein in the excesses of productive-yet-reckless businesses. And then Trump became president and appointed a string of regulatory heads who support entrenched businesses and oppose the existence of their own departments. And seemingly, no one noticed. Whether or not Tom Wheeler and Michelle Lee were qualified to regulate the tech sector, Ajit Pai and Andrei Iancu aren't. My opinions on regulation are not strictly libertarian. But I'm absolutely baffled by watching left-leaning voices work their hardest to empower grossly incompetent regulators who disagree with all of their goals.