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Do you actually understand what you're asking for? Those sorts of regulations exist as consumer protections, because you're paying for a service ...
Yes, I do understand what I am asking for - these should indeed be paid services (subsidised by the government through a common national communication infrastructure, to make it cheaper for ordinary people). This gives three benefits - (1) strong consumer rights (no grey areas about who owns your data, better privacy, better recourse on poor service, mandated inter-connection between networks etc.), (2) creates a more competitive market (right now, the biggest problem with "free" services are that you need a lot of money, for a very long period, to compete with them, thus giving rich, foreign corporates a natural advantage) and (3) reduces surveillance capitalism and protects national security.
> You don't pay for WhatsApp, Telegram, Matrix, etc.
We do pay for it with our personal data that is mined to create profiles which is then used to manipulate us with advertisement. This data is also sold to (foreign) intelligence agencies thereby endangering a country's national security.
> First, social media platforms are not journalistic outlets.
If you speak publicly, to a mass audience, you need to care about what you say, just as newspapers / news channels are obliged to do so. If you create content for a mass audience, you should abide by the content regulation that the television and movies do too.
> if your country has free speech in its constitution, it doesn't have regulation of journalists.
My country (India) doesn't prescribe absolute free speech for individuals, like the US does (for various reasons, which we indians are comfortable with). Indian courts however uphold a higher threshold for restricting free speech in the media, to prevent governments from abusing their power.
By regulation for editors and journalists, I was talking about a different kind of regulation - in the old media (newspapers) once you appointed an editor or a journalist, there is a very high bar to fire them. This kind of job security allowed editors and journalists more freedom to resist editorial interferences from their employees, thus empowering the fourth estate in our democracy. There is also a high restriction to hiring foreigners for such jobs. (This is no longer the case for newer media and we can already see the crap it has become). A similar kind of setup can be enforced for social media reviewers too, ensuring platform owners and algorithm don't control the flow of info on it, and local people (and not foreigners) do.