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Facebook Should Be 'Regulated Like Cigarette Industry', Salesforce CEO Says (theguardian.com)
Facebook should be regulated like a cigarette company, because of the addictive and harmful properties of social media, according to Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff. From a report: Social networks would be regulated "exactly the same way that you regulated the cigarette industry," Benioff told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Here's a product -- cigarettes -- they're addictive, they're not good for you, maybe there's all kinds of different forces trying to get you to do certain things. There's a lot of parallels. I think that, for sure, technology has addictive qualities that we have to address, and that product designers are working to make those products more addictive, and we need to rein that back as much as possible," he added. Benioff, who founded B2B cloud computing company Salesforce in 1999, and is now worth more than $4bn, suggested that regulation of some form was inevitable for the technology industry. "We're the same as any other industry," he said. "Financial services, consumer product goods, food -- in technology, the government's going to have to be involved. There is some regulation but there probably will have to be more."
It's hard to take a CEO seriously when their own products promote vendor lock-in. It's literally a "leaving us feels difficult" versus a "leaving us is difficult" situation.
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Eh... well... Speech is regulated to some extent. Aside from the whole "yelling 'fire' in a theater" thing, there are various rules and controls on newspapers, TV, radio, and movies. There are some rules about the actual content, but even more importantly, there are rules about the way those businesses can run.
In may cases, there are regulations that are less about preventing people from speaking, and more about making sure the motivations are clear. To give a simple/obvious example, you can't make false claims in your advertising. It's a regulation on speech, but it protects against fraud.
I don't think there should be a law specific to Facebook, but there could be an attempt to regulate businesses like Facebook to require a certain level of transparency. Maybe when Facebook targets you with an advertisement, they're also required to indicate (1) that it is an advertisement; (2) who is paying for it; and (3) why you're being targeted. Instead of appearing on your wall as a news story, it could say, "This is an advertisement being served by HIPSTER_MART because you are classified as UNDER_40_YEARS_OLD and LIVES_IN_URBAN_AREA." And then maybe you should be allowed to set or remove your classifications.
I'm just making it up off of the top of my head, but my point is, there are forms of regulating speech that don't actually inhibit speech. They just make sure the audience has some understanding of who's talking to them and what the message really is.