Miocene

I’d say that, honestly. Comfortably so, even - if the large private providers are acting badly, at least there’s the potential of smaller private groups setting up their own.

Services directly managed by the state tend to require adherence to a government’s political preferences - where something like the idea of social media as a state-owned utility is concerned, the reality of that would inevitably trend in unfortunate directions for minorities that the government has decided to consider a problem.

From the perspective of someone in the UK, the ongoing shift in government and society towards openly discriminatory/suppressive policies aimed at some minorities (trans people, certain ethnic/cultural groups) and the accompanying moral panics to that effect make the idea of the state running, monitoring and controlling social media as a utility a bit terrifying - particularly for something so fundamental to modern life.

A lot of the issues with centralised social media in private hands would just be intensified if the state were directly running the show - it can’t be trusted to act as a benign, responsible steward.