It hardly surprises me that many people dislike the idea of regulating social media. I regard the idea with some caution myself, since I think ill-founded or poorly designed regulations would all too easily work against the general goal of making things a bit less toxic online, rather than improving conditions.
However, I think this editorial goes a bit too far in arguing against regulation as basically impossible to do without trying to redefine speech as a collective good rather than an individual right. It is quite possible to argue that people have an individual right to their speech but that it is possible for them to do things with it that will require regulatory or even law enforcement action. One may have the right to jog through a public park on a set schedule, but if that schedule happens to coincide with someone who is trying to stay away, that innocent jog quickly turns into harassment and stalking. The author, to his credit, does announce that harassment is and should remain unacceptable, but I doubt he grasps the extent to which it currently is accepted as a part of some online communities. Or the scale of the actions required to bring our online communities up to the same (not always good, incidentally) standard which currently applies to our public parks.
Also, the closing sentence - that social media is only real to the extent that we allow it to be - is frankly absurd. I've complained about people acting like the Internet is some fantasy world that can be safely ignored before; it's exactly the sort of dodge people use when they would rather not deal with the difficult problems that come with making our world better. Changing how we communicate doesn't make those communications any less real, nor does it make it any less important for us to ensure that the society using those links is one we can all participate in.
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