Would government regulation of social media solve this problem?
Should government regulate what companies such as Twitter, Facebook,
and others can and cannot do?

Most likely. Or at least regulation of how data mining is allowed.

The Brexit referendum in the UK and the POTUS election have many similarities, such as the result was a total surprise and it was a lot of ignorant people that caused the swing.

The similarities should be no surprise, it was the same company that made it happen. Cambridge Analytica.

Search for it on Facebook and you'll find several uploads about it. Search for "The Great Hack" on Netflix and you'll find a feature length documentary about it.


..

--- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
* Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)