What happens to a neighborhood when you hand over its streets to the city to manage traffic? Sounds reasonable, but you lose the freedom to set up a car wash or a lemonade stand without a permit. That's my first problem with this. Let's define terms. A public utility is a natural monopoly—water, electricity, maybe broadband infrastructure. It's one physical network, and competition is genuinely wasteful. Social media isn't like that. Facebook, X, TikTok, YouTube… they compete for your attention every day. There's no single pipe in the ground; there are dozens of distinct services. If we regulate them like utilities, the government gets to set the terms of access, which means deciding who gets a seat at the table. That's not about ensuring service, that's about controlling speech. We already regulate the physical internet. Let's not hand over the town square to city hall.

I remember when my hometown made the local bus service a public utility to "protect the public." Fares went up, routes got political, and the real safety issues didn't disappear. That's what happens when you solve a security problem with a control problem. I hear you about terrorism. That's a real fear, and nobody wants to see that spread. But treating social media like a utility wouldn't stop determined bad actors—they'd just move to encrypted apps or the dark web. What it would do is put government in charge of deciding who gets access to the digital town square. That's not welfare over privacy; that's power over speech. A utility guarantees service. Social media already gives everyone access. The actual fight is about content moderation, which is a judgement call, not a pipeline. Once you regulate it like water, the government sets the rates—and the rules. I'd rather keep that messy, imperfect market than hand City Hall the keys.

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