One fairly common pattern seen is that companies develop in a nascent space where there were few rules and were therefore able to basically outrun regulation/ the law that moves very slowly. When that regulation eventually comes it ends up solidifying the monopolistic advantage by essentially creating a moat and closing the door on practices that helped create such growth in the first place. I think when stakes are that high, companies are generally rewarded and incentivized to be unscrupulous rather than virtuous, especially when the unscrupulous actors just become wealthy enough to buy out the virtuous ones.
I wouldn't be surprised if we are currently in the middle of a version of this regarding social media and how privacy of personal information is handled right now.
What would a developed civilization do? I doubt we would be able to prevent the “bubble up and close the door” behavior, so should it also ensure that corporations are regularly rotated (ie dismantled for others to take the space) so only those which can succeed fairly in the current law framework would survive?
This argument is brought up a lot, but it seems the lack of regulation hadn't really stopped FB and Google from monopolizing their markets anyway (or, oligopolizing if we think they're in the same market).
Internet was funny. In the case of Uber, the nascent space was virtual but that was enough for them to ask for the ability to play with the old space with a fresh empty rule set.
I wouldn't be surprised if we are currently in the middle of a version of this regarding social media and how privacy of personal information is handled right now.