“MOST SECTORS OF the economy are a conspiracy between the big incumbents and their punitive regulators,” venture capitalist and software engineer Marc Andreessen tells Reason this month (page 48). Asked to identify pockets of relative freedom and competition, he offers what he calls “the cynical answer”: There’s still innovation “in the spaces that don’t matter. Anybody can bring a new toy to market. Anybody can open a restaurant.”
Social media is the latest industry to transition from a free, fun space that “doesn’t matter” to a sector the state deems too important to be left to the market. At first, the justifications for intervention were numerous and rapidly shifting: Early calls to regulate or break up Facebook and Twitter were often
