This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 9th, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Facebook is backing government regulation of social media in part because they don't want to be put

in a position where Facebook, a private company, makes decisions about what

constitutes political speech unfit for their platform. John Samples is author of a new Cato policy analysis out today

why the government should not regulate content moderation of social media. It's

available today. In a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos,

Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook,

has called, you know, continued his call for regulation.

And it's not really clear exactly what he wants the government to do but

if you're a student of public choice you're aware that whatever regulatory regime

emerges from the federal government that Facebook will be probably

well equipped to comply with it?

With Mark Zuckerberg, I think there's several things going on.

The times are difficult.

There's lots of calls for regulation,

and he's making some calculations about how

can I get the company through this in as good as shape as possible?

So he's becoming essentially political.

He's trying to be as politically maneuverable as possible to get the company through it.

The other, as you correctly mentioned, the other issue is whether he intends it or not, is you could end up doing things and the

government could end up doing things that will actually cement a monopoly

position one that doesn't exist now. So we have this history with technologies

...