Meta's Settlement Exposes the Limits of Content Regulation
Source: Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Meta's $725 million FTC settlement over youth privacy violations amounts to a fine that barely dents quarterly earnings while the company maintains operational control over its platforms. Ben Thompson identifies the structural issue: governments lack the technical expertise and enforcement mechanisms to govern algorithmic systems at scale, so they resort to settlements that punish outcomes—data collection—rather than redesigning the systems that produce them. Until regulators articulate what "safe" social media actually looks like, not just which practices are forbidden, enforcement actions will remain reactive, leaving the core business models of tech platforms untouched.