The Real Reasons Why Facebook’s Zuckerberg Wants More Government Regulation

Wednesday, April 3, 2019
By Paul Martin

by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
ZeroHedge.com
Wed, 04/03/2019

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants more government regulation of social media. In a March 30 op-ed for the Washington Post, Zuckerberg trots out the innocent-sounding pablum we’ve come to expect from him:

I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms.

But what sort of regulation will this be? Specifically, Zuckerberg concludes “we need new regulation in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”

He wants more countries to adopt versions of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Needless to say, anyone hearing such words from Zuckerberg should immediately assume this newfound support for regulation is calculated to help Facebook financially. After all, this is a man who lied repeatedly to his customers (and Congress) about who can access users’ personal data, and how it will be used. He’s a man who once referred to Facebook users as “Dumb F-cks.” Facebook lied to customers (not be confused with the users) about the success of Facebook’s video platform. The idea that Zuckerberg now voluntarily wants to sacrifice some of his own power and money for humanitarian purposes is, at best, highly doubtful. (Although politicians like Mark Warner seem to take it at face value.)

Fortunately for Zuckerberg, thanks to the economic realities of government regulation, he can both support government regulation and enrich himself personally.

Those who are familiar with the effects of government regulation will not be surprised to hear a billionaire CEO throw his support behind it. Large firms with dominant market share have long made pace with government regulation because it often helps these firms create and solidify monopoly power for themselves.

Specifically, there are three ways that regulation will help Facebook.

One: Regulations Will Give Facebook More Monopoly Power

The Rest…HERE

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