With permission from Stuff's editors --

Selected parts of an Opinion piece by Damien Grant, contributor to Stuff and supporter of the Free Speech Coalition

"If you need evidence of why governments should not be trusted with regulating social media companies you only need to flick through the twenty four page advertorial masquerading as a report produced by the freshly minted Helen Clark Foundation last week."

"It isn't a long read, being mostly stock photos and images of Clark and Ardern, but its message is clear: new regulations are needed to prevent online hate speech in order to combat terrorism."

"Which may strike some readers as odd, as the west has been subjected to decades of terrorism that wasn't instigated by Neo-Nazis nor transphobes."

...

"Last year, Mark Zuckerberg outlined his view before the US Congress. "I think part of the challenge with regulation in general is that when you add more rules that companies need to follow, that's something that a larger company like ours inherently just has the resources to go do, and that might just be harder for a smaller company getting started to be able to comply with."

"The Facebook chief executive is exactly right. Regulation provides barriers to entry. Once the new rules are in place no one will be starting a new social media company in their dorm room."

You can read the whole of the article on Stuff.