> Right now I think it's a problem that social media companies can do research without answering to the same regulatory bodies that regular academics / researchers would. For example, they don't have to answer to independant ethics committees / reviews. They're free to experiement as they like on the entire population.

If they are going to publish in academic journals, they will have to answer to those bodies. Whether those bodies have any teeth is a whole other matter.

Well, journals requiring ethics is not the reason research requires ethics approval. It is just that journals ask to help ensure due process is occurring. We need ethics approval, because prior to having ethics etc. researchers did some truly awful things in the name of science, often with no benefit/gain.