Could they self-regulate? Yes. Will they self-regulate? No.
By now, the indulgence of people who once were young, cool, liberal-seeming, San Francisco executives—of course they're going to try to do the right thing.... I think they've lost the ability to claim that this was the benefit of the doubt. It is time for comprehensive regulation as the European Union has passed with the Digital Services Act and as the United Kingdom, my home country, has passed with the Online Safety Act, which finally received royal assent a few weeks ago.
I think it is about time that Canada joined the rest of the world in promulgating legislation that will actually ensure that the negative externalities of these companies and their failures to think about safety by design, their negligent product design, actually result in economic disincentives that create a culture in which these companies start to think about the impact they have on our information ecosystem and, therefore, our world.