> should be heavily regulated.

By who, exactly? It’s easy to call for regulation when you assume the regulator will conveniently share your worldview. Try the opposite: imagine the person in charge is someone whose opinions make your skin crawl. If you still think regulation beats the status quo, then the call for regulation is warranted, but be ready to face the consequences.

But if picturing that guy running the show feels like a disaster, then let’s be honest: the issue isn’t the absence of regulation, it’s the desire to force the world into your preferred shape. Calling it “regulation” is just a polite veneer over wanting control.

My view is that they are just exposing issues with the people in the said societies and now is harder to ignore them. Much of the hate and the fear and the envy that I see on social networks have other reasons, but people are having difficulties to address those.

With or without social networks this anger will go somewhere, don't think regulation alone can fix that. Let's hope it will be something transformative not in the world ending direction but in the constructive direction.

I agree, but focusing on "the algorithm" makes it seems to the outsider like it must be a complicated thing. Really it just comes down to whether we tolerate platforms that let somebody pay to have a louder voice than anyone else (i.e. ad supported ones). Without that, the incentive to abuse people's attention goes away.

We've seen what happens when we pretend the market will somehow regulate itself.