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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: 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 . . .