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New Mexico Judge Appoints Himself Meta's New Product Manager
(www.techdirt.com)
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Arguably, neither does Meta. Or alternatively, they do understand perfectly and have intentionally made malicious decisions, forcing the judge into the position of taking those decisions away from them.
We need some kind of third-party oversight group that has enforcement powers, but is somehow immune to corporate influence, goverent overreach, and religious fundamentalism.
I dunno, I think judges are more likely to be "child safety experts" than private companies with a history of doing the worst thing possible to all their users (absolutely including children).
You uh ... ever heard of the school-to-prison pipeline? Judges throughout the country have repeatedly been caught literally selling kids to private prisons. Look at what Britney Spears went through and tell me the US judiciary knows-best.
The judge could have turned the matter to experts. He didn't.
Don't get me wrong, I know the judicial system is pretty flawed, but their job is to rule on behalf of people's wellbeing, at least in the United States. The reason the school-to-prison pipeline even exists is due to pressure from for-profits similar to Facebook.
I do agree that it would be better for a judge to turn to an expert opinion in this kind of case, and to avoid lobbyist and corporate groups, specifically.
(And FWIW after I made my first comment did I realize that the author of this article is Mike Masnick, who is an advocate for social networks because he is employed by one.)
Yeah, the article's agenda is pretty overt. End of the day, I don't care about a corporations "rights" being violated, but this judge had the opportunity to do right by the public and set a precedent, and instead opted to shit all over it.
Wouldn't be surprised if he's actually unhappy with the jury's verdict, seeing as he's playing the "anti-corpo big-government over-reach" character to a tee.
I wonder who they consider to be a "child safety expert" and how much their definition is a no true Scotsman fallacy.