Wow! I agree with Justice Clarence Thomas on something!
Though my concerns are with national unity, disinformation and social division. My premise is the truth is a fundamental human right and should not compete with lies, lies kill citizens and Trump proved it beyond a doubt.
Guys like Thomas have watched their political home get burned to the ground as the republicans descend into madness. The leader of his party is a criminal and a seditionist who attempted to overthrow democracy and Thomas knows it, as do the other conservatives on the court. Even corporate America is jumping ship on the republicans, they know that they are worse than useless, they have become a problem and an impediment to economic growth.
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Clarence Thomas suggests US should regulate Twitter and Facebook - CNNPolitics
Justice Clarence Thomas suggests US should regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter
(CNN)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.
"Justice Thomas's opinion represents the first time that we've seen a Supreme Court Justice appear to endorse the view increasingly prevalent among conservatives that private social media platforms should potentially be subject to significant government regulation notwithstanding the First Amendment," said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
No other justice joined Thomas's opinion, that came as he agreed with
the court's decision to dismiss a case concerning Trump's use of Twitter while he was President. Thomas said the court was right to dismiss the case that predated the election and Twitter's decision to ban Trump after the Capitol Hill riot.
But Thomas said the issue caused him to think about the "principal legal difficulty that surrounds" a digital platform, specifically the concentration of power in the hands of so few owners at social media companies. He took the opportunity to suggest further exploration which could lead to a sea change for tech platforms if it ever gained traction.
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."
