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Justice Clarence Thomas suggests US should regulate Twitter and Facebook:
Justice Clarence Thomas suggested on Monday that Congress should consider whether laws should be updated to better regulate social media platforms that, he said, have come to have "unbridled control" over "unprecedented" amounts of speech.
The provocative and controversial opinion comes as Twitter banned former President Donald Trump from its platform for violating its rules on incitement of violence and some conservatives have called on more regulations in the tech world to combat what they view as political bias on social media.
"If part of the problem is private, concentrated control over online content and platforms available to the public, then part of the solution may be found in doctrines that limit the right of a private company to exclude, " Thomas wrote in a 12-page concurring opinion Monday.
Thomas's stance will raise concerns from critics who point out that social media platforms have not historically been subject to such content regulation, but instead have been left to devise their policies on their own.
[...] Today's digital platforms, Thomas argued, "provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech," but he said it also concentrates control "of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties."
[...] "The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions," he added.
[...] The conservative justice said that the court will soon have "no choice" but to address how legal doctrines apply to "privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms."
Katie Fallow, a First Amendment expert at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said that the group actually shares Thomas concern about the power over speech being concentrated in the hands of so few. "But we think that concentrating that same power in the hands of government regulators will not necessarily solve the problems associated with social media companies." Instead, she worried it might exacerbate the issue.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:56AM (19 children)
Good summation, Katie. The First Amendment was created so that there would not be super powerful gatekeepers on speech. Yes, it only applies to government. Yes, they should have considered that there could wind up being other gatekeepers with far more power than is viable for a free society. No, SCOTUS has no business allowing the government to regulate the power these companies hold by judicial ruling. Yes, Congress does have the authority (and it looks increasingly like they also have the necessity) to do so but only with extremely careful deliberation, only as invasively as absolutely necessary, and only via Constitutional Amendment.
Did I miss anything?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:00AM (18 children)
You think Fuckbook/twatters are the gatekeepers?
Hell no. It's AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. that are the REAL gatekeepers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:18AM (10 children)
Yeah, totally. Sprint is always cutting my phone service off because I said something woke-prohibited in a text message. Fucking retard.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:29AM
About time they cracked down on your inciteful posts, Buzzrard. Think of it as a "reverse aristarchus"!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:00AM (4 children)
They will if the government tells them to. Regulation of service provision is infinitely more important than regulating entertainment providers, which is all facebook et al are, and we always have another channel to tune in. It's no big deal if facebook cuts you off, but it sure is if your ISP does. They must be classified as common carrier utilities. Leave facebook alone.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:33AM (3 children)
Not just no but hell no. Any calls for telecom regulation right now are being driven as a long term plan to demand crackdowns on those the woke do not approve of. The government needs to stay the fuck out unless abuse of that type actually starts happening.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:48AM (2 children)
Wrong again. There is plenty of abuse. Common carrier (dumb pipe) status is absolutely necessary, symmetrical download/upload, no redirection, no exclusive contracts, the right to muni/state supplied service to compete, etc. We have to open the market, ignore the lobbyists. The government needs to stay the fuck out of Facebook and Twitter and all other content providers. They are cartoon channels
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:09AM (1 child)
Pointing fingers at those who aren't blatantly fucking the American people to take the focus off the ones who actively are? Really? How much are they paying you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:48AM
But they are. Can you put up your own server? If you are consuming the same bandwidth, they shouldn't tell you what you can put on it. Bandwidth is bandwidth. That's the only thing they should be allowed to regulate, not the content. Indeed, your ISP is doing all the fucking, using facebook as its big wooden pecker. You are wagging the dog
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:27AM
How much are you paying Facebook and Twitter to publish your filthy, pseudo-libertarian, and sleepy text messages anyway?
The only reason Sprint carries your shit is because you're the customer in that relationship.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:36AM (2 children)
Listen, you lame buffoon, is your IQ still high enough to see a difference between the gatekeeper and the lord of the manor?
Let me spell it for you. If the lord of the manor throws you in jail because you said something woke-prohibited in a text message, the gatekeeper will only make sure the door to your cell is securely closed.
Now, identify the lord of the manor, your beef is with him. Hint - this wannabe [usnews.com] is not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:01PM
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:34AM
Except telecom companies are not doing that while the major speech centers are.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 07 2021, @07:20AM (6 children)
AT&T etc are relatively "dumb pipes". Fakebook/Tweeter etc consists of "influencers" who feel it is their right, and their duty, to reeducate everyone who doesn't agree with them.
What TMB said, too.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:04AM (5 children)
They have you as paying customer (and still fuck you).
Those have you (the influenced) and the "influencers" as merchandise.
You have no say over the price and conditions they sell you for.
And it is true because that's what the majority of the "market" wants. If their opinions wouldn't not attract more eyeballs and approval, Fakebook/Tweeter etc would drop them immediately.
You and TMB are second hand merchandise, no matter how much you foam at the mouth or how many times your side storms the Capitol.
Better get used to it, the market has spoken.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @08:38PM (1 child)
You wouldn't need to engage in widescale censorship, overt lies, and suppression if you were just appealing to the trends of a functioning society. Twitter is run by ideologues who have the support of just about nobody in the instances where they inadvertently let their views [forbes.com] slip out into public. As an aside, Dick Costello is now on the board of Patreon - big surprise, right?
And beyond this America now seems to be falling into increasingly rapid decline, and these companies are all contributing in substantial ways - often at their own expense. So clearly they are not driven by rational self interest, which does rather beg the question of what are they driven by? And there? I have no answer. They seem to be behaving in a way that makes no real sense for the pursuit of *any* agenda that I can fathom, whether benevolent or malevolent. Why work to destroy a system you're already effectively on top of (and that enable your rags to riches rise)? Why destroy your own business when such will result in the decline of your own influence? If all makes no sense whatsoever. If I really force myself to seek a hypothesis, maybe it's something as silly as them having done far too many drugs since achieving success leaving themselves still operably functioning but with severely impaired abstract reasoning abilities.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:54PM
You're wrong on this one. They are doing it because the rest of the worlds asks them to. You know? Europe and India alone will make an about 5 times larger market than the weird US.
Don't believe me? For example, have a look on the hate speech legislation [wikipedia.org] around the world, most of which predates the Social Media, with specific recent additions for it (2015-2019). On that list, US is the only one that stick out as a sore thumb.
Let me repeat it as a convenient reminder: "Better get used to it, the market has spoken".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @09:00PM (2 children)
Actually quite amusing. You made me go search a bit for this and something I never noticed - during Dorsey's meeting with congress, his pupils were *extremely* contracted. Here [youtu.be] is a moment where you can see them clearly. For comparison here [wikipedia.org] is the pic on his wiki page. It's called miosis. It's caused by a number of drugs including numerous opioids (fentanyl, morphine, heroin, etc). Though even beyond that photo contrasted with how he looks in the video are increasingly looking like a before and after shot of "Kids, this is why you don't do drugs."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 09 2021, @02:58PM (1 child)
Have you considered the possibility of a significant amount of "studio lights" placed out of sight of the cameras, to provide sufficient light intensity to produce a clean low-noise video recording?
The illumination level needed for a clean low-noise video is going to be more than bright enough to cause significant pupil contraction (i.e., it would be like being outside in Arizona at high noon on a cloudless day).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 09 2021, @09:48PM
No one goes outside in Arizona on a cloudless day. Maybe lizard people . . .