Instead, companies with > $1 billion annual revenue...
That would just turn the issue in to an accounting problem. Facebook would license their logo from Facebook Logo Inc, the like button from Thumbs Up Ltd, their servers from Facebook Servers PLC, and so on. Every one of the companies would make, at most, $999,999,999 in revenue.
A much simpler and easier legal solution would be to tax companies based on the number of users (based on an independent audit). For example, the first ten million are free (yay startups!) and then the company has to start paying $1 per user for the next 100 million, $5 each for the next 500 million, and $10 each user for the rest. Companies would be encouraged to actively limit the size of their platform by ejecting users and bots who don't make them any money, or to charge users for access.
> That would just turn the issue in to an accounting problem.
...A type of problem which government agencies the world around have extremely powerful tools to manage and prevent abuse in. Sure, abuse still exists (some of it significant--see "too big to fail" etc.), but such oversight is massively better than nothing, especially where direct to consumer social media/marketing platforms are concerned.
> A much simpler and easier legal solution would be to tax companies based on the number of users (based on an independent audit)
That's just another metric upon which you have to trust an oversight agency. Users might be a better metric than revenue, but it's still going to result in highly imperfect (but, again, better than nothing) regulation.
Would you say that bread should be free because it's not fair that only rich people should have bread? How about Ferraris? Houses? Why should social media be different? Note that I did suggest some smaller social media services should be free of this tax, so they could still operate free for user if they chose to. Social tools are useful. It just doesn't have to be a huge network run by a single company.
Besides, there's nothing stopping social media companies charging right now other than the fact they make more money by not charging, arguably to the detriment of everyone in society. Who do you think should be paying to solve that problem? No one?
That would just turn the issue in to an accounting problem. Facebook would license their logo from Facebook Logo Inc, the like button from Thumbs Up Ltd, their servers from Facebook Servers PLC, and so on. Every one of the companies would make, at most, $999,999,999 in revenue.
A much simpler and easier legal solution would be to tax companies based on the number of users (based on an independent audit). For example, the first ten million are free (yay startups!) and then the company has to start paying $1 per user for the next 100 million, $5 each for the next 500 million, and $10 each user for the rest. Companies would be encouraged to actively limit the size of their platform by ejecting users and bots who don't make them any money, or to charge users for access.