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Justice Thomas argues for making Facebook, Twitter and Google utilities
- tomohawk 6y agoWhat he actually said is here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20579870/order-list-04_05_2021.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20579870/order-li... Short, and worth the read.
- anfilt 6y agoDefinitely more nuanced than the article above about this statement is.
- jl2718 6y agoHe’s bringing a lot of stuff together here. Firstly the obvious contradiction in the public forum / private platform treatment of RDT, secondly the utility doctrine for natural monopolies, and thirdly the relationship between equal access law and antitrust. I’d like to come out on the side against regulation, but, frankly, the regulation is already stacked against open platforms. As soon as anything illegal (and now increasingly only objectionable) is found on a tiny platform, it is easily shut down by threatening their payment processor, while the big platforms harbor illegal activity hundreds of times as large as elsewhere, and avoid liability by asserting best effort. Imagine if ‘Big Social’ disappeared forever the day after a broadcasting a live murder. Yes, this actually happened several times with absolutely no repercussions, while ‘other bbs’ was famously and immediately shut down after some guy wrote a post about what he did. It seems to me that Jack sees the writing on the wall, and knows that this can’t last, but everybody in government will do everything they can to prevent decentralization. Regulation and protection as a utility may emerge as a preferable alternative to getting wiped out.
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