Rose Wang, chief operating officer of Bluesky, said in a recent interview that the current regulatory ideas for social media platforms in various countries, especially the ban on children's Internet use and more stringent compliance requirements, may objectively solidify the monopoly status of large technology companies, making it easier for capital-rich giants to survive, but significantly raising the entry threshold for small and medium-sized innovative companies.
Since social media became available to the public in the 2000s, relevant regulations have been relatively loose for a long time. This stage has provided space for platforms such as Meta, Snapchat, and Google to accumulate users and consolidate market share, among which Meta is the most prominent. After completing its "bigger and stronger" efforts, Meta was accused of trying to achieve so-called "regulatory capture" by promoting stricter industry supervision: on the one hand, it uses its own abundant funds to calmly deal with compliance costs; on the other hand, it increases the burden on latecomers in terms of system, making it more difficult for emerging social platforms to shake their existing advantages.
In an interview with CNBC, Wang emphasized that she supports the goals of protecting youth and online safety, but worries about the long-term consequences of over-regulation. She pointed out that if the regulatory route that focuses on heavy compliance and high thresholds continues, the social media industry may slip into a situation where there are only three to five large platforms left, and the compliance teams of these platforms may even be ten times the size of Bluesky's entire team. This will make it almost impossible for small innovators to enter the market and build a healthier online community.
In Wang’s view, large platforms have placed too much emphasis on “profit orientation” and have long-term neglected their duties in content management and user protection, forcing the government to intervene in supervision. But she also emphasized that regulatory design should not be at the expense of competition and innovation, but should provide more mechanisms for small and medium-sized platforms to have the opportunity to communicate directly with regulatory authorities and feedback on the practical difficulties they face in fulfilling their compliance obligations.
Wang said that Bluesky is not opposed to regulation itself, but calls for differentiating platforms of different sizes and resource conditions at the regulatory execution level, and through smoother communication channels to prevent small and medium-sized players from "losing their voice" in system design. She also bluntly stated that those large technology companies that have been repeatedly exposed to evade supervision should become the focus of supervision and cannot continue to exploit loopholes in the rules to consolidate vested interests.
Even so, the ideas proposed by Bluesky focus more on maintaining market competition itself, but have not yet fundamentally responded to the privacy controversies surrounding the current social media ban on minors and the age verification system. Relevant measures often require users to submit sensitive identity documents to prove age and access restricted content, which creates new risks in privacy protection and triggers continued concerns about data security and abuse from all walks of life.
This statement continues the intense discussion in the industry on "how to strike a balance between protecting minors, maintaining privacy, and maintaining the vitality of market competition." In the context of an increasingly stringent regulatory environment, the situation of emerging platforms such as Bluesky is becoming a mirror to measure whether new regulations truly balance security and innovation.