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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: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:34AM (2 children)
If a corporation is a ‘person’ with equal rights to a natural person, then, it follows that they don’t have to allow anyone on their platform they don’t like. You have free speech but I don’t have to allow you to put a banner in my front yard saying something I don’t like.
So I really find it repulsive that corporations have “free speech rights” [wikipedia.org] but when they exercise their right not to associate with someone else’s speech (which is part of “free speech”) they cry censorship.
McConnell today saying it is “ ‘Stupid’ for corporations to speak out on politics“ [thehill.com] is repulsive, so long as the “free speech” is campaign contributions, it is fine; if it is against voter suppression, it’s ‘stupid’.
I don’t have FB, twitter or any other social media; I hate those companies and I really believe they should be regulated, but I would start by stopping campaign contributions from corporations, because that is a cancer that eats democracy. After that, we can perhaps have honest representatives to deal with the social media and other corporations out to make slaves out of all us.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:36AM (1 child)
Jesus fucking Christ, Read The Fucking Story even if you're not going to Read The Fucking Article. Or were you intentionally trying to strawman there?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @06:29PM
It is tangential and very relevant you Model T dipstick.