I'm not sure how you go about ending Facebook and Twitter. Facebook's market capitalization is $720B. Twitter is a relative minnow at $32B. Neither will go down

I'm not sure how you go about ending Facebook and Twitter. Facebook's market capitalization is $720B. Twitter is a relative minnow at $32B. Neither will go down without a pretty enormous fight; the resources at their disposal outflank the most well funded political campaigns in history. It's not realistic to think that these large social networks can be put back into the box. Ultimately, consumers like them, even if they aren't good for us. In a democracy, it's very tough to implement measures that destroy something that people actually like. I think that social networks should be regulated in the same way as other harmful, yet enjoyable vices such as cigarettes and alcohol. A first pass would be to create a tax on social network data harvesting that starts to recognize the value they extract from us. The revenue from this tax could be invested into research that helps to understand the impact the social networks have on our lives and on democracy itself. As with cigarettes, while we did not at first realize they were harmful, once it became clear through research that they caused harm, additional funding into high quality research allowed governments to eventually create science-guided policies that have largely put a lid on the problem. We are in the 1950s of social networking: i.e. doctors still recommend it. That needs to change.