This isn't actually about the evolution of the Internet, it's about the post-partum depression over the advent of social media, which is not the same thing at all. It is rather amusing to hear the cyber robber barons bleating for more government regulation as the answer to their own excesses. In the face of such regulation they wouldn't be in a position to demand it.
"Don't gather the data" is probably the least workable of solutions, since it's unenforceable and not really the source of the problem. It's what is done with the data that is the problem. In the face of this, Google's notorious corporate slogan "Don't be evil" is certainly the most cynical bit of post-modern irony ever constructed; "be evil and revel in it" only requires the additional caveat "and blame somebody else" to be a perfect formulation of the actual activities of the self-named gatekeepers of information flow. In fact, the pendulum has swung from a pretense that perfect objectivity is possible to the present conviction that any objectivity is impossible and irrelevant in the face of the accretion of power.
This may swing back to a slightly more acceptable middle ground, but it's making an awful mess in the meantime. One of the most unintended results of the empowerment of the common user to communicate to millions of his or her peers is not the freedom it confers but the ruthlessly enforced groupthink it allows. The answer to that is not, unfortunately, more regulation.
From the slashdot comments
Open letter to tech’s crybabies.... (+1)
WolfgangVL 3 hours ago
Please, don’t ruin everything that is great about the net because a vocal minority has no damn self control. It seems the same people that have been blowing off a decade of warnings have suddenly decided we were right all along, and now they need to make a few power moves to save face.
Please guys, enjoy your expensive coffee, your avocado toast, and your 6 figure salaries while they last, but don’t bring the rest of us down with you when the chickens finally come home to roost. Believe it or not, even though YOU’VE BECOME ADDICTED to your own supply, the majority of us have been quietly avoiding the dumpster-fire that is social media. You don’t hear us because we are not playing. Please don’t invite governments to “fix” whats not broken. Fix yourselves.
Go outside. I hear the weather is nice in CA
Well, “don’t be evil” does speak to the “good intentions” of the modern secular liberal.
The problem here is good and evil unanchored to God’s reference frame. The old Garden folly.
Rather than spending a lot of effort putting down secular liberals, we would be better situated to show them what a life looks like that does have good and evil anchored to God’s reference frame. In fact that is exactly what the gospel orders us to do! In every way make the gospel attractive. Putting down secular liberals is a literally God damned PRIDE game. I have decided to permanently sit that game out. Getting glory for God requires quite a different tack, even sympathetic in a way. You’re trying to do something good, dear secular liberals, but you’re doing it in a way that will never work because there isn’t a reliable reference frame.
One fairly perceptive politician pointed out at the Zuck hearing that regulation would mainly serve to prevent competition for Facebook.