> Would they not be in favor of _less_ regulation so they can provide services to their users with fewer legal considerations?

Regulatory capture. If the handling of user messages requires constant scanning and there are enough rules that you need a team of lawyers, then only Google, Meta and Apple will be able to afford it.

Also without chat control they would have to follow much stricter eprivacy directive laws that makes many of their monetisation strategies ilegal.

It's briliant really... instead of trying to dismantle privacy regulations you push for new regulation that overrides them and make data mining users even mandatory.

I cannot imagine Musk simply submitting to this sort of EU demand, and he has enough hue-and-cry capability on X to maneuver other tech firms into very uncomfortable positions in the same regard.

That is regulatory capture but it really feels like it should be called something else.

If the laws are designed to directly benefit it makes sense like with the FAA allowing Boeing to self regulate to the point of killing a few hundred people. This feels more like bureaucratic capture or some other name, where the entity must be so large to interact.

It has the same effect and you are not wrong, I just wish it was clearer.