Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tim Cook recently said, "I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation". This quote was made with regard specifically to Facebook's recent problems with privacy, and Cook then immediately said: “However, I think we’re beyond that here.” Clearly he thinks regulation can be necessary sometimes, and specifically he has been an advocate for user privacy. I don't know that he intended these words to b…
> Cook then immediately said: “However, I think we’re beyond that here.” Clearly he thinks regulation can be necessary sometimes If there is even a slightest chance of a hundred-billion dollar corporation ignoring morals and helping foreign powers install a dictator and destroy truth in publishing and trust in America, then it should be clear that Regulation was required from the start . There is no "oops now we get…
By the way, when Facebook was new nobody would have guessed that it might be involved in a Russian plot to influence a presidential election more than a decade in the future, so regulation would not have been proposed anyway.
And back in the 90s, the Justice Department claimed Microsoft was a monopoly that could only be stopped by government action. And then over the next few decades, Microsoft was knocked off its pedestal by companies and market trends that nobody anticipated. If it really had been a monopoly, that wouldn't have been possible.
Governments have a pretty bad track record of predicting the future, especially regarding the interaction between technology and culture.
> You can't know what their self-regulation means.
You also can't know what internal steps a company like Facebook has taken to deal with government regulations like GDPR. But you can measure outcomes. Given that regulations are intended to produce outcomes, that's what you ought to be measuring anyway.