There they were, on Twitter, no less: as far as Mark Zuckerberg is concerned, the two scariest words in the English language: “What’s Facebook?”

The ignoramus? A richly ironic Elon Musk. Asked online to delete SpaceX’s Facebook page “if you’re the man,” Musk casually twisted the knife: “I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.” It’s already gone. Tesla’s too.

In an age of media malaise, and tech vilification, bad press is a manageable inconvenience. But for Facebook, the great threat to its business model isn’t being the bad guy. It’s being boring.

Doubtless, Zuckerberg has his hands full parrying accusations that he and his fellow social media moguls are indeed the bad guys. From the Cambridge Analytica affair to high-profile criticism by former Facebook intimates nowcondemning the platform as an addiction machine, the house that Zuck built looks more manipulative and exploitative than ever.

Naturally, his response to his critics boils down to the classic, deceptively naïve question that justifies social media: Can’t we be friends? Rather than acting like the now-typical digital denizen, gleefully and aggressively doubling down, Zuckerberg clings to the crumbling social media ideal of the compliant striver. “I started this when I was so young and inexperienced,” he confessed on CNN. Older and wiser, he welcomes government regulation of Facebook—and, implicitly, the rest of social media. He’s not the bad guy. Bad users are.

Now, Facebook could take swift and easy action right now to cut down on the velocity and reach of “bad content” from those bad users. Say, a little tweak to the algorithms that help content go viral. By putting a circuit breaker on content going too viral too fast—think of the way we shut down the stock market when it’s crashing—Zuck could show Facebook can be trusted to start cleaning house on its own.

But alone, actions like that keep responsibility where Zuckerberg doesn’t want it: on him. By embracing regulation, making Washington the good guy, Zuck can stay in his lane, making bank by connecting everyone nice in the world. Top corporations are apt to favor new regulations to lock in their dominant position—especially an industry as littered with corpses as social media. Despite its move-fast-and-break-shit past, the Facebook of today wants what it thinks all nice and good people should want: harmony, stability, and universality.