“Aren’t they made to do this by regulators”

Yes and that’s one of the underlying problems with all such systems, second to the problem of financing a site.

It’s the law of “unintended consiquences” that applies to most modern laws brought in as a cure for a problem that politicians (or the rest of us for that matter) don’t understand.

Likewise history has shown that all tools that are usefull will eventualy become weapons.

These issues are not new, society in the past had these issues as well, but generaly they where localised and custom and practice resolved the issues as they developed over time. Usually the greater good of the utility of a tool was found to out weigh it’s evil as a weapon.

Therefor we kind of accept the fact that knives need to have sharp points to be usefull as a tool, but as a consiquence the knife can also be used to maim and kill.

The compramise is a “mature” response arived at as the issues evolved over considerable time compared to current human expereance via the “grandfather effect” (ie “it was good enough for gand pops so it’s good enough for me”)

However due to amongst other things “free market” ideals technology has made “local” an irrelavance, your society is not the town you live in anylonger it’s the “globe” and technology has via automation increased the power of an individual to that of an army of “idiot savants” doing a masters bidding unquestioningly.

The unfortunat side effect is new technologies and methods do not have time to mature and likwise peoples attitudes do not have time to evaluate the “greater good” against the “inherant evil”.

The problem we now face as a global society is significant. New technology will almost invariably be used for bad as well as good. But bad news travels fast and impacts heavily on the human mind often before the greater good utility has been seen. Especialy when the technology enables a lone individual to effectivly practice evil against millions in time scales to short for individuals let alone societies to react.

It has turned us into proffesional luddites driven by “sound bite” fear to voice “something must be done to stop this evil” usualy with a “fore the sake of the children”.

However the traditional luddite response of “putting in the clog” (sabotage) is not what society needs if it is to move forward with technology.

We have an uneasy relationship with the last great enabaling technology (powered transport available to the masses) and the effects it has had on society even after a hundred years are still not understood by the many.

Aren’t they made to do this by regulators worried about grooming of under age teenagers etc etc? The problem is a much with the ecosystem for social networking as it is with social networks themselves. We need to find ways to communicate the more positive capabilities of new technology (eg, U Prove).