"good for the consumer" is sufficient reason for regulating government granted monopolies, within reason. In general it is NOT sufficient justification to regul

"good for the consumer" is sufficient reason for regulating government granted monopolies, within reason. In general it is NOT sufficient justification to regulate a company in the free market. The bar for regulation in general is substantially higher, at least in the United States. There is a bar, of course (environmental regulation preventing dumping waste or emitting carcinogenic fumes, for example) and we will likely spend millions of person hours over the next decade figuring out where it is for large content companies (which Facebook is), but saying "it's good in both cases, therefore we should regulate both types of companies" is not correct (which was your argument). Which is to say, regulation might be justified in a less free-market oriented country, like France, on equivalent grounds, but there is a substantive moral and legal distinction to be made in the minds of many who enjoy a free market economy. And no, Netflix is not a straw man. My argument applies just as well to Facebook, StackOverflow, Ebay (which is regulated as a commerce platform), Google, Amazon, etc., as it does to Home Depot, Walmart, etc. etc. We default in these cases to not regulating.