vox--2020-11-17--A taxonomy of Gen Z selfie poses

A taxonomy of Gen Z selfie poses

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Did you know that the cool thing for high schoolers to do right now is theatrically slap their hand over their mouth ?
“ I ’ m a high school teacher and I see all the trends now , and this is the new thing , ” begins a TikTok video featuring a woman explaining to the rest of the adults what random things her students are up to .
“ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know why , I don ’ t get it , ” she says .
“ They like , slap their face.
” Dramatic face-slapping is far from the only Gen Z facial tic that has permeated the culture .
Since TikTok ’ s US debut in 2018 , it has spawned a vast network of poses and gestures that I ’ ve collectively dubbed “ TikTok Face , ” each with its own meanings and uses .
The face-slapping thing , for instance , is all over my TikTok feed , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why : Putting your hand over your mouth in surprise or incredulity is a purely visual way of illustrating the feeling , so on TikTok , where many videos replace the original sound with a different audio , you can clearly tell what emotion is being expressed .
Also , fake laughing looks awkward , and teenagers , a notoriously self-conscious segment of the population , love hiding their faces .
But I highlight these poses not to gawk at how different teenagers are from the rest of us ( they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on some seemingly strange habits you ’ ve seen on the internet .
The first one I saw where I was like , “ Oh , this is TikTok Face ” was the nose scrunch , sometimes with a simultaneous wiggle .
It looks like this : Brittany Tomlinson , a comedy TikToker best known as “ kombucha girl , ” explained to me that this , among other “ thirst trap ” faces , was an expression that people do before performing a TikTok dance .
Why would someone scrunching their nose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ TikTok has such a different form of thirst trap than Instagram or Twitter , ” she explained .
“ There ’ s this hyperfixation on being a cute little baby .
Like , why ?
I don ’ t get it .
It ’ s like , ma ’ am , you have taxes to pay.
” In the same vein of faces to make before doing a dance , there ’ s another one where you suck in the corners of your lip to look like a fish .
Nobody could tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact that it is likely because of Charli D ’ Amelio .
( Also , it makes you look like you have great cheekbones .
Mystery solved ! )
Abby Roberts , a TikTok-famous beauty influencer , explained to me that a lot of these poses are endemic to the platform .
“ On TikTok everyone loves facial expressions for some reason , because it ’ s quite a young audience and you have to really be emotive and have it go with the music and stuff , ” she said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ faces ; like , sticking their tongue out is a big thing as well .
I guess it ’ s just translated into photos.
” While the nose scrunch and fish lips are earnest attempts at looking cute , most TikTok poses share at least some degree of irony .
“ I thought you were gon na ask about the Facebook mom pose that we make fun of , ” Brittany said after I asked her to explain a few of them .
( It ’ s where you take a selfie from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s like , ‘ I love my husband and guns.
’ ” “ There ’ s also this one , ‘ we irritating , ’ ” she said , referring to the iconic Snap photo of two girls in matching outfits covering their faces with the caption “ We irritating.
” “ We haven ’ t done that one in a while though , ” she said .
“ That was like , last summer.
” There are so many more !
There ’ s one where you theatrically tuck your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There ’ s one where you do cosplay moves , but ironically .
There ’ s one where you pretend to be Justin Bieber circa 2012 and stroke your chin while looking like you ’ re trying to fart .
Remember that viral tweet of the e-boy dance move where you roll your eyes back into your head while gently tapping your temple ( I can ’ t find it , but here ’ s BTS ’ s Jungkook doing it ) ?
That was one , for like five minutes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s no real word for what these movements are .
“ Poses ” feels like the closest term , but there ’ s almost always action involved , and the word doesn ’ t really convey that .
Perhaps the most accurate way to describe them is “ emotes , ” a common concept in video games wherein a character performs a specific action .
Emotes can be anything from dances to gestures and facial expressions , and that ’ s what these things are : Tiny performances for the sake of comedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extra flavor to a video .
Young people will always have their own slang ( remember in the mid-2000s when everyone was describing themselves as “ hyper ” and “ random ?
” ) , but the TikTok generation has created a language that ’ s far more visually driven , which seems like a natural result of an app designed for staring at people ’ s faces all day .
TikTok Face might seem corny or embarrassing , but honestly , so is everything else .

This is from The Goods’ weekly newsletter. Sign up to receive the best of our coverage on consumerism and Internet culture every week.
Did you know that the cool thing for high schoolers to do right now is theatrically slap their hand over their mouth?
“I’m a high school teacher and I see all the trends now, and this is the new thing,” begins a TikTok video featuring a woman explaining to the rest of the adults what random things her students are up to. “It’s usually really hard. I don’t know why, I don’t get it,” she says. “They like, slap their face.”
Dramatic face-slapping is far from the only Gen Z facial tic that has permeated the culture. Since TikTok’s US debut in 2018, it has spawned a vast network of poses and gestures that I’ve collectively dubbed “TikTok Face,” each with its own meanings and uses.
The face-slapping thing, for instance, is all over my TikTok feed, and I have a galaxy brain theory about why: Putting your hand over your mouth in surprise or incredulity is a purely visual way of illustrating the feeling, so on TikTok, where many videos replace the original sound with a different audio, you can clearly tell what emotion is being expressed. Also, fake laughing looks awkward, and teenagers, a notoriously self-conscious segment of the population, love hiding their faces.
But I highlight these poses not to gawk at how different teenagers are from the rest of us (they’re not!) but to provide context on some seemingly strange habits you’ve seen on the internet. The first one I saw where I was like, “Oh, this is TikTok Face” was the nose scrunch, sometimes with a simultaneous wiggle. It looks like this:
Brittany Tomlinson, a comedy TikToker best known as “kombucha girl,” explained to me that this, among other “thirst trap” faces, was an expression that people do before performing a TikTok dance.
Why would someone scrunching their nose up be a thirst trap? “TikTok has such a different form of thirst trap than Instagram or Twitter,” she explained. “There’s this hyperfixation on being a cute little baby. Like, why? I don’t get it. It’s like, ma’am, you have taxes to pay.”
In the same vein of faces to make before doing a dance, there’s another one where you suck in the corners of your lip to look like a fish. Nobody could tell me why it was popular except for the fact that it is likely because of Charli D’Amelio. (Also, it makes you look like you have great cheekbones. Mystery solved!)
@charlidamelio THANK YOU FOR 80 MILLION SERIOUSLY THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU ALL ♬ original sound - Ian Asher
Abby Roberts, a TikTok-famous beauty influencer, explained to me that a lot of these poses are endemic to the platform. “On TikTok everyone loves facial expressions for some reason, because it’s quite a young audience and you have to really be emotive and have it go with the music and stuff,” she said. “So everyone does all these crazy faces; like, sticking their tongue out is a big thing as well. I guess it’s just translated into photos.”
While the nose scrunch and fish lips are earnest attempts at looking cute, most TikTok poses share at least some degree of irony. “I thought you were gonna ask about the Facebook mom pose that we make fun of,” Brittany said after I asked her to explain a few of them. (It’s where you take a selfie from a comically high angle.) “It’s like, ‘I love my husband and guns.’”
“There’s also this one, ‘we irritating,’” she said, referring to the iconic Snap photo of two girls in matching outfits covering their faces with the caption “We irritating.” “We haven’t done that one in a while though,” she said. “That was like, last summer.”
There are so many more! There’s one where you theatrically tuck your hair behind your ear and do duckface. There’s one where you do cosplay moves, but ironically. There’s one where you pretend to be Justin Bieber circa 2012 and stroke your chin while looking like you’re trying to fart. Remember that viral tweet of the e-boy dance move where you roll your eyes back into your head while gently tapping your temple (I can’t find it, but here’s BTS’s Jungkook doing it)? That was one, for like five minutes.
It’s annoying that there’s no real word for what these movements are. “Poses” feels like the closest term, but there’s almost always action involved, and the word doesn’t really convey that. Perhaps the most accurate way to describe them is “emotes,” a common concept in video games wherein a character performs a specific action. Emotes can be anything from dances to gestures and facial expressions, and that’s what these things are: Tiny performances for the sake of comedy or cuteness, meant to add some extra flavor to a video.
Young people will always have their own slang (remember in the mid-2000s when everyone was describing themselves as “hyper” and “random?”), but the TikTok generation has created a language that’s far more visually driven, which seems like a natural result of an app designed for staring at people’s faces all day. TikTok Face might seem corny or embarrassing, but honestly, so is everything else.


vox--2020-11-17--The ethics of deliberately infecting volunteers with Covid-19 to test vaccines

If daring volunteers get their way , they will soon become infected with Covid-19 — on purpose .
They ’ re young .
They ’ re healthy .
And they want scientists to give them a candidate vaccine and then deliberately expose them to the coronavirus , so we can all find out faster whether the vaccine is effective .
This is called a human challenge trial , and it ’ s controversial for obvious reasons : The volunteers might get sick or even die .
But proponents argue that it would speed up vaccine development , and even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just a bit faster , that could still mean many thousands of lives saved .
You may have heard the recent good news on the vaccine front : Pfizer says its vaccine is 90 percent effective and Moderna says its vaccine is nearly 95 percent effective .
Those vaccines were developed via conventional clinical trials , not human challenge trials .
Here ’ s the difference : A conventional trial vaccinates people and then waits months to see if they get infected anyway while they go about their normal lives .
A challenge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccinating people , exposing them to the virus on the spot , and seeing how well the vaccine protects them .
Results come in extremely fast , and they ’ re reliably instructive because scientists can control all the conditions .
They know exactly who was exposed , how big a dose of virus they were exposed to , and how their immune system responded day by day .
A human challenge trial is set to begin in London in January , assuming it gets final ethics and regulatory approval .
Scientists have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influenza , malaria , typhoid , dengue , and cholera , but this will be the first for Covid-19 .
A company called Open Orphan and its subsidiary hVIVO will run the study .
Only healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30 will be allowed to participate .
The challenge trial is not meant to replace conventional clinical trials — the different types of trials will proceed along parallel tracks .
Many young people are clamoring to participate in a challenge trial .
The advocacy group 1DaySooner has gathered the names of nearly 39,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d be interested in volunteering .
In July , the group sent an open letter to Francis Collins , the head of the National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) , calling for human challenge trials in the US .
The letter was signed by more than 30 Nobel laureates and many prominent philosophers and psychologists , including Peter Singer , Steven Pinker , and Rebecca Goldstein .
They wrote : “ If challenge trials can safely and effectively speed the vaccine development process , there is a formidable presumption in favor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a very compelling ethical justification to overcome.
” So far , the US has not given the green light to such a trial , although the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is paying for the preparation of the viral strains that would be needed if a trial gets the go-ahead .
In Belgium , the government has dedicated $ 23.6 million to facilities to host such trials , which may include Covid-19 .
The UK trial will begin with an initial phase that isn ’ t about testing vaccines at all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preliminary question that lays the groundwork for testing vaccines later .
The question is : How much of the virus does someone need to be exposed to in order to launch an infection ?
Starting in January , scientists will expose a small group of unvaccinated volunteers ( somewhere between 50 and 90 people ) to a very low dose of the virus , gradually increasing it until they find “ the Goldilocks dose ” — enough to infect most participants , but not enough to make them very ill. All participants will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is no control group , and all will be paid for their time .
They ’ ll be sequestered in a quarantine facility for over two weeks so as to avoid infecting anyone else , and so that doctors can monitor them 24/7 and give them immediate medical care — including the antiviral drug remdesivir — as soon as they show signs of sickness .
Only after this initial phase concludes in the spring would the company ( if it gets approval ) actually inject volunteers with candidate vaccines to study their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be a control group .
“ Half the volunteers will get a vaccine , half will get a placebo vaccine , and all of them will be exposed to the virus , ” explained Andrew Catchpole , the chief scientific officer at Open Orphan , who ’ s conducting the study .
But there is no reliable cure for Covid-19 .
So under these conditions , some say it ’ s unethical to infect healthy people with a virus that can cause death or long-term disability .
Let ’ s break down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and how a human challenge trial for a Covid-19 vaccine can be done ethically .
Can volunteers truly give informed consent in this case ?
One of philosophy ’ s most famous thought experiments is known as the Trolley Problem .
It poses this dilemma : Should you make the active choice to divert a runaway trolley so that it kills one person if , by doing so , you can save five people along a different track from getting killed ?
Consequentialists or utilitarians typically say yes , because you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ matter .
Deontologists ( also known as Kantians ) typically say no , because you have a duty to not kill anyone as a means to an end and your duties are what matter .
A challenge trial is a little bit like a Trolley Problem .
We ’ re talking about potentially sacrificing a few healthy volunteers in order to save many thousands of other people ’ s lives .
Again , the utilitarian would say we should go ahead with the trial because of its vast potential for good .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a duty not to infect a healthy person with a life-threatening disease for which we have no cure .
There ’ s a crucial difference , however : The people getting run over in the Trolley Problem aren ’ t consenting to their fate .
The volunteers in a challenge trial are .
Or are they ?
“ I ’ m not convinced that we can actually obtain informed consent from people given that we ’ re still seeing the emerging effects of long Covid , ” said Angela Rasmussen , a virologist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the fact that , for at least 10 percent of people who contract Covid-19 , some of the disease ’ s poorly understood effects — ranging from brain fog to lung scarring to heart conditions — can last for months .
Scientists don ’ t yet have a clear understanding of the risk factors for long-term Covid-19 , nor can they predict its duration .
Some argue this isn ’ t a problem : The researchers running a human challenge trial can just inform the volunteers that a lot of uncertainty remains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be signing up for long-term disability .
The volunteers can consent to the uncertainty .
Rasmussen is not convinced .
“ People are going to dismiss that , ” she told me .
“ I don ’ t think it ’ s possible to convey the seriousness by just saying it ’ s uncertain.
” Her conviction stems from personal experience : In 2014 , she was on an NIH panel on chronic fatigue syndrome .
She ’ d read the facts about the condition , but said she didn ’ t fully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the suffering it brought to people ’ s lives — until she actually met people who had the condition .
“ Being physically unable to get out of bed and having doctors not believe you and having to completely change your life — it ’ s not the kind of thing you necessarily can understand by reading an informed consent document , ” Rasmussen said .
Similarly , volunteers in a human challenge trial , who will be young people without experience of persistent illness , might not understand on an emotional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at risk of long-term effects from Covid-19 .
Data from previous studies suggest there is a gap between understanding health risk on an intellectual level and appreciating it emotionally .
Nevertheless , the philosopher and MacArthur “ genius grant ” winner Rebecca Goldstein said signing onto 1DaySooner ’ s letter in support of challenge trials was “ almost a no-brainer ” for her .
“ I have more faith both in people ’ s ability to understand the consequences of things , and in some people ’ s incredible sense of responsibility to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Maybe it ’ s hard to imagine that there really are altruistic people , and we think , ‘ Oh , they just don ’ t understand that harm could come to them.
’ But I do believe there are such people.
” Her conviction also stems from personal experience — namely , her Jewish family ’ s experience during World War II .
“ I only exist because some of my Hungarian forebears were hidden by people who risked !
They knew exactly what was going to happen to them if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it anyway .
To me , this is the same kind of thing.
” Goldstein also argued that Rasmussen ’ s type of reasoning would have consequences we just couldn ’ t live with as a society .
“ We allow people to volunteer for the army , to become policemen , to become firefighters , ” she said .
“ How is that any different ?
They ’ re young and they feel invulnerable .
Nevertheless , we need them.
” There ’ s another complicating factor here : money .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there might be a problematic incentive for low-income people to take part in a trial that could harm their health , which is arguably exploitative .
Volunteers in the UK trial will be paid , though exactly how much remains unclear ; an ethical review board will decide how they should be compensated .
Typically , though , Open Orphan pays people around $ 5,000 to participate in a challenge trial , which entails over two weeks in quarantine , plus coming in for follow-up visits for up to a year .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skyrocketing unemployment , it ’ s going to be attractive to some people to make a few thousand dollars by agreeing to be in a study like that , ” Rasmussen said .
Goldstein shares this concern .
“ I ’ m a little nervous about that , to tell you the truth , ” she said .
“ It seems to me that muddies the incentive.
” But Seema Shah , a bioethicist at Lurie Children ’ s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University , said we should think about the flip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t compensated for their time , then they are being exploited .
They ’ re being asked to subsidize the research .
That doesn ’ t seem fair.
” She suggested the solution would be to reimburse participants for travel to and from the trial site and compensate them for their time .
Specifically , they should be paid wages equivalent to what they ’ d earn for doing any other sort of unskilled labor .
In addition , they should receive free medical care , including for any long-term effects that may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is in line with the wage-payment model outlined years ago by nurse-bioethicist Christine Grady .
More recently , bioethicists have authored a report explaining how reimbursement and compensation could be ethically paid out in the case of Covid-19 challenge studies in particular .
That report notes that “ undue inducement does not seem to be a significant problem based on available evidence.
” Broadly speaking , that is the impression that emerges from interviews with would-be volunteers .
Many of them seem to be motivated not by financial need , but by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a 22-year-old prospective volunteer , are emblematic of their rationale .
“ So many people are struggling right now , and I want this pandemic to be over , ” she told the Associated Press .
“ Every day that goes on , more cases are going on , more people are dying .
And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner , I want to help .
I want to be a part of that.
” For his part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ quite staggered ” by the numbers of young people wanting to volunteer .
“ We had over 40,000 applications within a week .
They pretty much crashed our website and our phones .
And we ’ re seeing a high percentage very openly stating those altruistic reasons to do their bit.
” How much would a human challenge trial help us scientifically ?
Initially , proponents advocated for challenge trials on the grounds that they ’ d help us discover a Covid-19 vaccine faster .
But it now looks like a challenge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phase until January , and won ’ t begin actually testing vaccines until the spring .
That doesn ’ t really save us time .
By January , we may already have an Emergency Use Authorization for a vaccine that ’ s gone through clinical trials , like the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine .
The reason these trials have been able to get results quickly is that many countries have totally failed to get Covid-19 under control .
As the virus has ripped through populations , it ’ s infected enough people in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the scientists were able to get the data they needed .
So the case for a challenge trial has changed .
Even though it might not get us to the first vaccine faster , advocates say , it could accelerate the development of better second-generation vaccines .
After all , the first vaccine is rarely the best , and it ’ s likely a few different vaccines will come on the market in the next few years .
“ To me the question is , is the risk of doing a trial like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ value ?
” said Shah , the bioethicist .
“ And I think we ’ re sort of at a point where we ’ re pushing the bounds of what ’ s been accepted in other kinds of research.
” On the one hand , the value of getting us to a second-generation vaccine faster is significant .
“ Generally , in order to bring down the cost of any drug or intervention , you need at least four other versions of it available on the market .
If you think about trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will have great need but won ’ t be able to pay huge amounts of money , you can imagine there ’ s really a need to develop cheaper vaccines for them , ” she said .
What ’ s more , a challenge trial could offer scientists valuable information about the pathogenesis of the disease , say , or about the immune responses that vaccinated people mount when exposed to the virus .
Rasmussen , the virologist , acknowledges that could be useful intel , but says it ’ s not urgently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until we have a vaccine that we know is effective from a regular clinical trial , and better rescue therapies .
In the meantime , Rasmussen argued , the lack of diversity in a challenge trial will limit its scientific utility .
“ A challenge trial is going to have to be done in young healthy people , and that ’ s fine , but that isn ’ t really going to tell us how the vaccine works in people who need it the most ” — elderly people , immunocompromised people , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That said , it ’ s not like such a trial would tell us nothing that ’ s of use to these vulnerable populations .
If we have a vaccine that works in young healthy people , it may not work as well in the elderly , because their immune systems don ’ t work as well — but chances are it ’ ll still be effective to some degree .
What ’ s more , Catchpole said , “ It ’ s as important to kill a vaccine that ’ s not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promote one that does .
If we can use the challenge model in the younger population to see which vaccine doesn ’ t have efficacy , we can get a very quick read and prioritize the next candidate vaccine.
” So where does that leave us ?
Shah said that at this point , it ’ s not clear to her that the value of Covid-19 challenge trials quite justifies the risks .
“ I ’ m glad I ’ m not the one who has to make the call , honestly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a very close question whether they ’ re justified .
There ’ s room for reasonable people to disagree.
” Many people are suspicious of extreme altruists .
Why ?
Running through this whole debate is a fundamental question about human nature : Is true altruism possible ?
Some people are highly skeptical that it is , and the open letter released by 1DaySooner this summer contains a fascinating paragraph betraying an awareness of that : “ Decades of psychological research on highly altruistic behaviors has demonstrated that a large , and likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others due to genuinely altruistic motivation rather than insensitivity to risk , psychopathology , or other ethically concerning motives.
” We can infer the implicit concern that people may be suspicious of someone who volunteers to get Covid-19 — that they may assume any such volunteer must be irrational or incapable of understanding the risks .
This concern about altruism isn ’ t new .
A long line of philosophers and economists have expressed or observed suspicion toward altruists who are willing to incur a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help perfect strangers .
We can see this , for example , in the 1982 paper “ Moral Saints ” by Susan Wolf .
The philosopher observes that we don ’ t tend to like extreme altruists ( she uses the phrases “ a moral fanatic ” and “ a disgusting goody good ” ) and says , “ there seems to be a limit to how much morality we can stand.
” In more recent years , the Stanford psychologist Benoit Monin has demonstrated an effect called “ do-gooder derogation.
” He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warm toward people who are extremely altruistic .
That may be because they make us feel moral conflict about our own behaviors .
And neuroscientist Molly Crockett at Yale has conducted studies to determine whether people prefer consequentialists or deontologists .
To get at that , she showed subjects the classic Trolley Problem and the different ways of responding to it .
She found that when people are looking for a friend or spouse , they strongly prefer deontologists , viewing them as more moral and trustworthy .
People are suspicious of consequentialists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same suspicion is now being extended to extreme altruists signing up to be exposed to the coronavirus .
But scientific research has shown that some people truly are extreme altruists , who perform impressively noble acts out of a genuine desire to help others .
Neuroscientists like Abigail Marsh have shown that extreme altruists may actually have neurological differences that make them predisposed to such extraordinary behavior ; they ’ ve got larger amygdalae , for one thing .
Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have argued that this is a more widespread phenomenon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limited to people who are biologically predisposed to extreme altruism .
They contend that people everywhere seem to be becoming more altruistic overall .
As societies become wealthier and the world globalizes , we ’ re expanding our circle of moral concern to include distant strangers .
Hence the line in the open letter asserting that “ a large , and likely growing , fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others.
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A group of daring volunteers will soon become infected with Covid-19 — on purpose.
They’re young. They’re healthy. And they want scientists to give them a candidate vaccine and then deliberately expose them to the coronavirus, so we can all find out faster whether the vaccine is effective.
This is called a human challenge trial, and it’s set to kick off in the UK within a month, now that an ethics board has given it the necessary approval. Scientists have run such trials in the past for influenza, malaria, typhoid, dengue, and cholera, but this will be the world’s first for Covid-19.
The trial is controversial for obvious reasons: The volunteers might get sick or even die. But proponents argue that it would speed up the development of more successful vaccines, which could mean many thousands of lives saved.
The vaccines we already have — like those from Pfizer and Moderna — were developed via conventional clinical trials, not human challenge trials.
Here’s the difference between the two kinds of trials: A conventional trial vaccinates people and then waits months to see if they get infected anyway while they go about their normal lives. A challenge trial eliminates the whole wait-and-see period by vaccinating people, exposing them to the virus on the spot, and seeing how well the vaccine protects them. Results come in extremely fast, and they’re reliably instructive because scientists can control all the conditions. They know exactly who was exposed, how big a dose of virus they were exposed to, and how their immune system responded day by day.
Even though some Covid-19 vaccines developed through conventional trials are already out in the world, proponents say we should still go ahead with challenge trials because they can accelerate the development of better second-generation vaccines and give scientists useful data about how the disease develops in the body and how the immune system responds.
A company called Open Orphan and its subsidiary hVIVO will run the study in the UK. Only healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30 will be allowed to participate. The challenge trial is not meant to replace conventional clinical trials that are still ongoing for the different vaccines in development — the different types of trials will proceed along parallel tracks.
Many young people clamored to participate in the challenge trial. The advocacy group 1DaySooner gathered the names of nearly 39,000 people in 166 countries who said they’d be interested in volunteering.
In July 2020, the group sent an open letter to Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), calling for human challenge trials in the US. The letter was signed by many prominent philosophers and psychologists, including Peter Singer, Steven Pinker, and Rebecca Goldstein. So far, the US has not given the green light to a challenge trial, although the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is paying for the preparation of the viral strains that would be needed if a trial gets the go-ahead. In Belgium, the government has dedicated $23.6 million to facilities to host such trials, which may include Covid-19.
The UK trial will begin with an initial phase that isn’t about testing vaccines at all; it’s about answering a preliminary question that lays the groundwork for testing vaccines later. The question is: How much of the virus does someone need to be exposed to in order to launch an infection?
Scientists will expose a small group of unvaccinated volunteers (somewhere between 50 and 90 people) to a very low dose of the virus, gradually increasing it until they find “the Goldilocks dose” — enough to infect most participants, but not enough to make them very ill. All participants will be dosed with the virus, as there is no control group, and all will be paid for their time. They’ll be sequestered in a quarantine facility for over two weeks so as to avoid infecting anyone else, and so that doctors can monitor them 24/7 and give them immediate medical care as soon as they show signs of sickness.
Only after this initial phase concludes in the spring would the company actually inject volunteers with candidate vaccines to study their effectiveness. At that point, there would be a control group. “Half the volunteers will get a vaccine, half will get a placebo vaccine, and all of them will be exposed to the virus,” explained Andrew Catchpole, the chief scientific officer at Open Orphan, who’s conducting the study.
But there is no reliable cure for Covid-19. So under these conditions, some say it’s unethical to infect healthy people with a virus that can cause death or long-term disability, especially now that vaccine are actually circulating in the real world. Let’s break down the issues at stake to understand if and how a human challenge trial for a Covid-19 vaccine can be done ethically.
Can volunteers truly give informed consent in this case?
One of philosophy’s most famous thought experiments is known as the Trolley Problem. It poses this dilemma: Should you make the active choice to divert a runaway trolley so that it kills one person if, by doing so, you can save five people along a different track from getting killed?
Consequentialists or utilitarians typically say yes, because you’re maximizing overall good and consequences are what matter. Deontologists (also known as Kantians) typically say no, because you have a duty to not kill anyone as a means to an end and your duties are what matter.
A challenge trial is a little bit like a Trolley Problem. We’re talking about potentially sacrificing a few healthy volunteers in order to save many thousands of other people’s lives. Again, the utilitarian would say we should go ahead with the trial because of its vast potential for good. But the deontologist may argue that we have a duty not to infect a healthy person with a life-threatening disease for which we have no cure.
There’s a crucial difference, however: The people getting run over in the Trolley Problem aren’t consenting to their fate. The volunteers in a challenge trial are.
Or are they?
“I’m not convinced that we can actually obtain informed consent from people given that we’re still seeing the emerging effects of long Covid,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist affiliated with Georgetown University told me last October. She was referring to the fact that, for at least 10 percent of people who contract Covid-19, some of the disease’s poorly understood effects — ranging from brain fog to lung scarring to heart conditions — can last for months. Scientists don’t yet have a clear understanding of the risk factors for long-term Covid-19, nor can they predict its duration.
Some argue this isn’t a problem: The researchers running a human challenge trial can just inform the volunteers that a lot of uncertainty remains about Covid-19, and that they might be signing up for long-term disability. The volunteers can consent to the uncertainty.
Rasmussen is not convinced. “People are going to dismiss that,” she told me. “I don’t think it’s possible to convey the seriousness by just saying it’s uncertain.” Her conviction stems from personal experience: In 2014, she was on an NIH panel on chronic fatigue syndrome. She’d read the facts about the condition, but said she didn’t fully internalize on a gut level the quality of the suffering it brought to people’s lives — until she actually met people who had the condition.
“Being physically unable to get out of bed and having doctors not believe you and having to completely change your life — it’s not the kind of thing you necessarily can understand by reading an informed consent document,” Rasmussen said.
Similarly, volunteers in a human challenge trial, who will be young people without experience of persistent illness, might not understand on an emotional level what it means to put themselves at risk of long-term effects from Covid-19. Data from previous studies suggest there is a gap between understanding health risk on an intellectual level and appreciating it emotionally.
Nevertheless, the philosopher and MacArthur “genius grant” winner Rebecca Goldstein said signing onto 1DaySooner’s letter in support of challenge trials was “almost a no-brainer” for her.
“I have more faith both in people’s ability to understand the consequences of things, and in some people’s incredible sense of responsibility to others,” she told me last October. “Maybe it’s hard to imagine that there really are altruistic people, and we think, ‘Oh, they just don’t understand that harm could come to them.’ But I do believe there are such people.”
Her conviction also stems from personal experience — namely, her Jewish family’s experience during World War II. “I only exist because some of my Hungarian forebears were hidden by people who risked! They knew exactly what was going to happen to them if they got caught. And they did it anyway. To me, this is the same kind of thing.”
Goldstein also argued that Rasmussen’s type of reasoning would have consequences we just couldn’t live with as a society. “We allow people to volunteer for the army, to become policemen, to become firefighters,” she said. “How is that any different? They’re young and they feel invulnerable. Nevertheless, we need them.”
Would paying volunteers be exploitative?
There’s another complicating factor here: money. Paying volunteers for their participation might create a problematic incentive for low-income people to take part in a trial that could harm their health, which is arguably exploitative.
Volunteers will be paid around $6,240 to participate in the UK challenge trial, which entails over two weeks in quarantine, plus coming in for follow-up visits for a year.
“At a time when there’s skyrocketing unemployment, it’s going to be attractive to some people to make a few thousand dollars by agreeing to be in a study like that,” Rasmussen said.
Goldstein shares this concern. “I’m a little nervous about that, to tell you the truth,” she said. “It seems to me that muddies the incentive.”
But Seema Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University, said we should think about the flip side. “If people aren’t compensated for their time, then they are being exploited. They’re being asked to subsidize the research. That doesn’t seem fair.”
She said that a good solution is to reimburse participants for travel to and from the trial site and compensate them for their time. Specifically, they should be paid wages equivalent to what they’d earn for doing any other sort of unskilled labor. In addition, they should receive free medical care, including for any long-term effects that may result from participating in the study.
This is in line with the wage-payment model outlined years ago by nurse-bioethicist Christine Grady. More recently, bioethicists have authored a report explaining how reimbursement and compensation could be ethically paid out in the case of Covid-19 challenge studies in particular.
That report notes that “undue inducement does not seem to be a significant problem based on available evidence.” Broadly speaking, that is the impression that emerges from interviews with would-be volunteers. Many of them seem to be motivated not by financial need, but by altruism.
The words of Danica Marcos, a 22-year-old prospective volunteer, are emblematic of their rationale. “So many people are struggling right now, and I want this pandemic to be over,” she told the Associated Press. “Every day that goes on, more cases are going on, more people are dying. And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner, I want to help. I want to be a part of that.”
For his part, Catchpole said he’s been “quite staggered” by the numbers of young people wanting to volunteer. “We had over 40,000 applications within a week. They pretty much crashed our website and our phones. And we’re seeing a high percentage very openly stating those altruistic reasons to do their bit.”
How much would a human challenge trial help us scientifically?
Initially, proponents advocated for challenge trials on the grounds that they’d help us discover a Covid-19 vaccine faster. But now that vaccines are actually out in the world, some might argue there’s less urgency — or at least not enough to take on the risks involved in a challenge trial.
We already have emergency use authorizations for vaccines that have gone through clinical trials, like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The reason these trials have been able to get results quickly is that many countries have totally failed to get Covid-19 under control. As the virus has ripped through populations, it’s infected enough people in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s samples that the scientists were able to get the data they needed.
So the case for a challenge trial has changed. Even though it won’t get us to the first vaccine faster, advocates say, it could accelerate the development of better second-generation vaccines. After all, the first vaccine is rarely the best, and it’s likely a few different vaccines will come on the market in the next few years — especially with the threat of virus variants.
“To me the question is, is the risk of doing a trial like this sufficiently low and justified by the value?” said Shah, the bioethicist. “And I think we’re sort of at a point where we’re pushing the bounds of what’s been accepted in other kinds of research.”
On the one hand, the value of getting us to a second-generation vaccine faster is significant. “Generally, in order to bring down the cost of any drug or intervention, you need at least four other versions of it available on the market. If you think about trying to get the vaccine to countries that will have great need but won’t be able to pay huge amounts of money, you can imagine there’s really a need to develop cheaper vaccines for them,” she said.
What’s more, a challenge trial could offer scientists valuable information about the pathogenesis of the disease, say, or about the immune responses that vaccinated people mount when exposed to the virus.
Rasmussen, the virologist, acknowledges that could be useful intel, but says it’s not urgently needed; a challenge trial can wait until we have better rescue therapies.
In the meantime, Rasmussen argued, the lack of diversity in a challenge trial will limit its scientific utility. “A challenge trial is going to have to be done in young healthy people, and that’s fine, but that isn’t really going to tell us how the vaccine works in people who need it the most” — elderly people, immunocompromised people, and people with underlying medical conditions.
That said, it’s not like such a trial would tell us nothing that’s of use to these vulnerable populations. If we have a vaccine that works in young healthy people, it may not work as well in the elderly, because their immune systems don’t work as well — but chances are it’ll still be effective to some degree.
What’s more, Catchpole said, “It’s as important to kill a vaccine that’s not got any chance as it is to promote one that does. If we can use the challenge model in the younger population to see which vaccine doesn’t have efficacy, we can get a very quick read and prioritize the next candidate vaccine.”
So where does that leave us? Shah said that at this point, it’s not clear to her that the value of Covid-19 challenge trials quite justifies the risks. “I’m glad I’m not the one who has to make the call, honestly, because I think it’s still a very close question whether they’re justified. There’s room for reasonable people to disagree.”
Many people are suspicious of extreme altruists. Why?
Running through this whole debate is a fundamental question about human nature: Is true altruism possible?
Some people are highly skeptical that it is, and the open letter released by 1DaySooner this summer contains a fascinating paragraph betraying an awareness of that: “Decades of psychological research on highly altruistic behaviors has demonstrated that a large, and likely growing, fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others due to genuinely altruistic motivation rather than insensitivity to risk, psychopathology, or other ethically concerning motives.”
We can infer the implicit concern that people may be suspicious of someone who volunteers to get Covid-19 — that they may assume any such volunteer must be irrational or incapable of understanding the risks.
This concern about altruism isn’t new. A long line of philosophers and economists have expressed or observed suspicion toward altruists who are willing to incur a major cost to themselves in order to help perfect strangers.
We can see this, for example, in the 1982 paper “Moral Saints” by Susan Wolf. The philosopher observes that we don’t tend to like extreme altruists (she uses the phrases “a moral fanatic” and “a disgusting goody good”) and says, “there seems to be a limit to how much morality we can stand.”
In more recent years, the Stanford psychologist Benoit Monin has demonstrated an effect called “do-gooder derogation.” He’s shown that we feel less warm toward people who are extremely altruistic. That may be because they make us feel moral conflict about our own behaviors.
And neuroscientist Molly Crockett at Yale has conducted studies to determine whether people prefer consequentialists or deontologists. To get at that, she showed subjects the classic Trolley Problem and the different ways of responding to it. She found that when people are looking for a friend or spouse, they strongly prefer deontologists, viewing them as more moral and trustworthy. People are suspicious of consequentialists. It’s possible that that same suspicion is now being extended to extreme altruists signing up to be exposed to the coronavirus.
But scientific research has shown that some people truly are extreme altruists, who perform impressively noble acts out of a genuine desire to help others. Neuroscientists like Abigail Marsh have shown that extreme altruists may actually have neurological differences that make them predisposed to such extraordinary behavior; they’ve got larger amygdalae, for one thing.
Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have argued that this is a more widespread phenomenon than we might think, one not limited to people who are biologically predisposed to extreme altruism. They contend that people everywhere seem to be becoming more altruistic overall. As societies become wealthier and the world globalizes, we’re expanding our circle of moral concern to include distant strangers. Hence the line in the open letter asserting that “a large, and likely growing, fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others.”
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vox--2020-11-17--The Supreme Court will hear a new attack on unions. The implications are profound.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid , a case targeting a 45-year-old California regulation that allows union organizers to briefly enter agricultural workplaces to speak to farmworkers .
But the case has implications that stretch well beyond labor organizing .
Among other things , Cedar Point could potentially allow businesses to deny entry to health inspectors and other government officials who ensure that those businesses are being operated safely .
The Fifth Amendment provides that private property shall not “ be taken for public use , without just compensation.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ takings clause ” gives them a broad right to “ exclude unwanted persons from [ their ] property , ” including union organizers — and that property owners are entitled to compensation if this right is violated by a state regulation .
If the Supreme Court were to hold that the government may not require a business to allow unwanted people on its premises , the implications could be staggering .
It could mean , for example , that the government runs afoul of the takings clause if it requires restaurants to submit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it requires power plants to be inspected to monitor their emissions , or if factories are required to allow workplace safety inspectors to observe working conditions .
A victory for the Cedar Point plaintiffs could potentially endanger a wide range of land use regulations — such as requirements that certain buildings install sprinkler systems to prevent a fire from spreading , or requirements that buildings in earthquake-prone areas be built to protect occupants from such quakes .
The Court could also potentially hand down a narrower ruling that singles out unions for inferior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 ) , for example , the Supreme Court voted along party lines to forbid public sector unions from charging certain fees to non-union members who benefit from the union ’ s services .
But the Court has , at least so far , not applied Janus to non-unions that charge similar fees .
A broad decision in Cedar Point , meanwhile , could fundamentally reshape the balance of power between the government and private property owners .
And it could do so in ways that don ’ t simply endanger workers ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of our lives less safe .
The specific regulation at issue in Cedar Point , as Harvard Law professor Niko Bowie noted on Twitter , “ was the product of a years-long campaign by César Chávez ” and the United Farm Workers .
Promulgated in 1975 , this regulation gives union organizers limited access to agricultural worksites , provided that those organizers disclose to the employer that they intend to enter a particular worksite .
Briefly , the regulation allows organizers to enter a worksite and speak to farmworkers for up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the start of work , the hour after the end of work , and the period when the workers break for lunch .
Before a union may take advantage of this regulation , however , it must notify the government and the employer that it intends to do so .
After filing the appropriate paperwork , the union then gains limited access to a worksite for up to 30 days .
A union may invoke this right to enter a particular worksite up to four times a year .
Thus , union @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s property for a maximum of 120 days a year , and only for a maximum of three hours on any given day .
Two kinds of “ takings ” under the Constitution The Supreme Court ’ s cases distinguish between “ per se ” takings , which are cases involving particularly significant intrusions on a person ’ s property that are entitled to special constitutional protection , and “ regulatory ” takings , where landowners ’ rights are more limited .
Property owners who are subject to a per se taking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owners who allege a mere regulatory taking are far less likely to prevail — even if the plaintiffs in a regulatory takings case challenge a land use regulation that imposes significant limits on how they can use their property .
In one classic regulatory takings case , for example , the Supreme Court upheld a New York City law that prevented the owners of the Grand Central train station from constructing a high-rise office building on top of the terminal .
Fairly few cases , moreover , qualify as per se takings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , unless a particular law either deprives a property owner of “ all economically beneficial or productive use ” of their property , or subjects the property owner to a “ permanent physical occupation ” of their land , the law is not a per se taking .
Given this existing framework , California ’ s farmworker access rule should not qualify as a per se taking .
Though the goal of a unionization drive is typically to pressure an employer into paying higher wages to their workers , the mere presence of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deprive an employer of all economic use of their property .
Similarly , the California regulation does not give union organizers the right to permanently occupy an employer ’ s land — it only lets them enter that land for a few hours a day , and for only four months of the year .
The Cedar Point plaintiffs , however , ask the Court to expand its definition of what constitutes a per se taking to include many regulations that merely allow an unwanted person to enter a landowner ’ s property @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not permit union organizers to permanently occupy an employer ’ s land , the Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that the regulation grants unions a permanent right that they can invoke against certain landowners ( known as an “ easement ” in the parlance of property law ) .
Thus , the plaintiffs argue that this case should be deemed a per se taking because the California regulation is itself permanent .
If the Supreme Court embraces this theory , however , the implications could stretch far beyond union organizing .
Imagine , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ all restaurants shall permit a government health inspector to enter their business once every three months , to inspect the property for health code violations.
” This hypothetical ordinance resembles the California regulation in that it only permits an unwanted person to enter a business ’ s property occasionally , but it also grants health inspectors a permanent power to enter into that property once every quarter .
If the California regulation violates the takings clause , then it ’ s hard to see how this health inspection ordinance — or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ periodically allow a government worker to inspect their property — doesn ’ t also run afoul of the Fifth Amendment .
Moreover , if the Court does expand its definition of what constitutes a per se taking — that is , what constitutes a “ permanent physical occupation ” of land — then such a decision could have profound implications for virtually any land development project .
Fairly basic laws requiring developers to install illuminated exit signs in their buildings — or to construct those buildings using sturdy , architecturally sound materials — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clause .
After all , if it is a “ permanent physical occupation ” of land to permit a union organizer to temporarily enter an employer ’ s property for a few hours a day , then why isn ’ t it a “ permanent physical occupation ” of land to actually require a developer to install a permanent physical structure inside one of their buildings ?
Thus , if the Supreme Court .
with its 6-3 conservative majority , decides to limit the rights of unions in Cedar Point , it could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could jeopardize a long list of land use laws .
At the very least , it ’ s hard to distinguish the California regulation from any law permitting government inspectors to investigate whether a business is complying with health , safety , or labor laws .

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a case targeting a 45-year-old California regulation that allows union organizers to briefly enter agricultural workplaces to speak to farmworkers. But the case has implications that stretch well beyond labor organizing. Among other things, Cedar Point could potentially allow businesses to deny entry to health inspectors and other government officials who ensure that those businesses are being operated safely.
The Fifth Amendment provides that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that this “takings clause” gives them a broad right to “exclude unwanted persons from [their] property,” including union organizers — and that property owners are entitled to compensation if this right is violated by a state regulation.
If the Supreme Court were to hold that the government may not require a business to allow unwanted people on its premises, the implications could be staggering. It could mean, for example, that the government runs afoul of the takings clause if it requires restaurants to submit to periodic health inspections, or if it requires power plants to be inspected to monitor their emissions, or if factories are required to allow workplace safety inspectors to observe working conditions.
A victory for the Cedar Point plaintiffs could potentially endanger a wide range of land use regulations — such as requirements that certain buildings install sprinkler systems to prevent a fire from spreading, or requirements that buildings in earthquake-prone areas be built to protect occupants from such quakes.
The Court could also potentially hand down a narrower ruling that singles out unions for inferior treatment. In Janus v. AFSCME (2018), for example, the Supreme Court voted along party lines to forbid public sector unions from charging certain fees to non-union members who benefit from the union’s services. But the Court has, at least so far, not applied Janus to non-unions that charge similar fees.
A broad decision in Cedar Point, meanwhile, could fundamentally reshape the balance of power between the government and private property owners. And it could do so in ways that don’t simply endanger workers’ rights but that could also potentially make all of our lives less safe.
California’s farmworker access rule, briefly explained
The specific regulation at issue in Cedar Point, as Harvard Law professor Niko Bowie noted on Twitter, “was the product of a years-long campaign by César Chávez” and the United Farm Workers. Promulgated in 1975, this regulation gives union organizers limited access to agricultural worksites, provided that those organizers disclose to the employer that they intend to enter a particular worksite.
Briefly, the regulation allows organizers to enter a worksite and speak to farmworkers for up to three hours a day — the hour before the start of work, the hour after the end of work, and the period when the workers break for lunch. Before a union may take advantage of this regulation, however, it must notify the government and the employer that it intends to do so. After filing the appropriate paperwork, the union then gains limited access to a worksite for up to 30 days. A union may invoke this right to enter a particular worksite up to four times a year.
Thus, union organizers are allowed on an agricultural employer’s property for a maximum of 120 days a year, and only for a maximum of three hours on any given day.
Two kinds of “takings” under the Constitution
The Supreme Court’s cases distinguish between “per se” takings, which are cases involving particularly significant intrusions on a person’s property that are entitled to special constitutional protection, and “regulatory” takings, where landowners’ rights are more limited.
Property owners who are subject to a per se taking typically win their suit, while property owners who allege a mere regulatory taking are far less likely to prevail — even if the plaintiffs in a regulatory takings case challenge a land use regulation that imposes significant limits on how they can use their property. In one classic regulatory takings case, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a New York City law that prevented the owners of the Grand Central train station from constructing a high-rise office building on top of the terminal.
Fairly few cases, moreover, qualify as per se takings. Under the Court’s existing precedents, unless a particular law either deprives a property owner of “all economically beneficial or productive use” of their property, or subjects the property owner to a “permanent physical occupation” of their land, the law is not a per se taking.
Given this existing framework, California’s farmworker access rule should not qualify as a per se taking. Though the goal of a unionization drive is typically to pressure an employer into paying higher wages to their workers, the mere presence of union organizers at a workplace does not deprive an employer of all economic use of their property. Similarly, the California regulation does not give union organizers the right to permanently occupy an employer’s land — it only lets them enter that land for a few hours a day, and for only four months of the year.
The Cedar Point plaintiffs, however, ask the Court to expand its definition of what constitutes a per se taking to include many regulations that merely allow an unwanted person to enter a landowner’s property temporarily.
Although the California regulation does not permit union organizers to permanently occupy an employer’s land, the Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that the regulation grants unions a permanent right that they can invoke against certain landowners (known as an “easement” in the parlance of property law). Thus, the plaintiffs argue that this case should be deemed a per se taking because the California regulation is itself permanent.
If the Supreme Court embraces this theory, however, the implications could stretch far beyond union organizing.
Imagine, for example, a city ordinance that provides that “all restaurants shall permit a government health inspector to enter their business once every three months, to inspect the property for health code violations.” This hypothetical ordinance resembles the California regulation in that it only permits an unwanted person to enter a business’s property occasionally, but it also grants health inspectors a permanent power to enter into that property once every quarter.
If the California regulation violates the takings clause, then it’s hard to see how this health inspection ordinance — or any other law that requires businesses to periodically allow a government worker to inspect their property — doesn’t also run afoul of the Fifth Amendment.
Moreover, if the Court does expand its definition of what constitutes a per se taking — that is, what constitutes a “permanent physical occupation” of land — then such a decision could have profound implications for virtually any land development project. Fairly basic laws requiring developers to install illuminated exit signs in their buildings — or to construct those buildings using sturdy, architecturally sound materials — could potentially run afoul of the takings clause.
After all, if it is a “permanent physical occupation” of land to permit a union organizer to temporarily enter an employer’s property for a few hours a day, then why isn’t it a “permanent physical occupation” of land to actually require a developer to install a permanent physical structure inside one of their buildings?
Thus, if the Supreme Court. with its 6-3 conservative majority, decides to limit the rights of unions in Cedar Point, it could open up a can of worms that could jeopardize a long list of land use laws. At the very least, it’s hard to distinguish the California regulation from any law permitting government inspectors to investigate whether a business is complying with health, safety, or labor laws.


vox--2020-11-17--The behind-the-scenes fight to influence Joe Biden on Big Tech has already begun

When it comes to Silicon Valley , Joe Biden is something of a blank slate .
And for Silicon Valley , that means Joe Biden is something of an opportunity .
So Big Tech reformers and Big Tech allies are gearing up for a spirited fight in the coming months over the types of people who will staff the Biden administration .
Those personnel decisions will offer some of the first revelations into how exactly the president-elect will regulate the tech industry and its titans , a high-stakes question about the American economy that he mostly avoided answering during his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transition period all the more important , a dozen people with ties to the Biden team tell Recode .
Reformers want to make sure they at least have a seat at the table and that they aren ’ t boxed out by well-paid industry interests .
Forces aligned with the industry , meanwhile , want to make sure that a Biden administration isn ’ t too captive to the online left , even though they know it won ’ t resemble the halcyon days of Barack Obama .
Back then , Silicon Valley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s innovation economy .
Since Obama left office , though , the tech industry has become radioactive to parts of both the left and the right , part of a “ techlash ” that has culminated in calls to break up Big Tech companies like Amazon , Apple , Facebook , and Google .
Tech critics worry that these companies and their leaders have amassed too much control over Americans ’ lives when it comes to privacy , the economy , and politics .
Now Obama ’ s former No .
2 will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dicier terrain : Will he pursue this breakup ?
Will he inflame the tensions or cool them ?
Will he side more with the reformers or the industry ?
The next few months will test the influence and muscle of both sides .
Tech insiders have been among Biden ’ s biggest donors and are well-organized .
But Biden has to be sensitive to a far left that is deeply skeptical of any corporate incursions — and is often louder .
“ They ’ re in a difficult political situation , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank , who helped lead a tech advisory committee for Biden during the campaign .
“ It ’ s almost like a draft lottery for what team you want .
You want to pick somebody on your team from the progressive wing and then somebody more from the tech or moderate wing .
He ’ s going to have to do both.
” The draft has already begun : Phones are ringing across the tech industry as people close to the Biden campaign gauge some leaders ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Silicon Valley veterans hunt for inroads .
Lobbyists and activists alike are researching names who they might want to push on Capitol Hill or disparage in the press .
People in the Bay Area who raised money for Biden are being overwhelmed with requests to pass along resumes to his inner circle .
And Biden ’ s team is encouraging experts who served on Biden ’ s tech advisory committee to apply for positions in the administration .
Flashpoints , too , have already emerged that speak to these new battle lines .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Eric Schmidt , the former CEO of Google and a vocal defender of technology giants , was “ being talked about ” to lead a new tech task force out of the White House .
( The report did not say who was doing this talking . )
On Monday , a dozen progressive groups wrote to the Biden transition effort to plead that Schmidt not be appointed to this task force .
The letter — shared first with Recode — amounted to a warning shot not just about one particular tech @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tech industry on politics more broadly .
“ The appointment of Schmidt risks fracturing a Democratic coalition that your campaign and so many others worked so hard to build over the past several months , ” said the letter-writers , which included activist groups like Demand Progress , the Revolving Door Project , and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee , a group allied with leading Big Tech critic Elizabeth Warren .
“ While the appointment of Schmidt may attract praise from certain elites in both Washington and Silicon Valley , it risks alienating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including within the Democratic base , who want to see the economic power of major corporations reined in.
” Silicon Valley sources close to the Biden team tell Recode that they are unaware of any planned formal role for Schmidt and that they find one hard to believe given the optics of Big Tech .
A source familiar with the matter said there have been no discussions between the Biden transition team and Schmidt about a role .
Sources do , however , expect Schmidt , a bipartisan veteran of the Washington scene @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years but also has had complimentary things to say about Jared Kushner , to at least have considerable access to the Biden White House .
There ’ s also the possibility that some aides at Schmidt ’ s philanthropic foundation , which is stacked with former Obama hands , will decamp for the new administration .
Schmidt and the Biden transition team declined to comment .
The battle over Schmidt is just one of several personnel fights that will likely play out in the first year of the new administration .
Other key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to influence include the chairs of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission , and the head of the Department of Justice ’ s antitrust division — all roles that police tech giants ’ behavior .
People allied with Big Tech say they aren ’ t concerned with developing blacklists of reformers who must be repelled .
But they are concerned about the converse — that the progressives are organizing themselves to torpedo any and all people who worked in the industry , even if they have relevant policy expertise about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country .
“ You would really want to have an administration that doesn ’ t have industry voices as a part of it ?
That to me sounds like a really problematic outcome , ” said Matt Perault , a former Facebook policy executive who now leads Duke ’ s Center on Science and Technology Policy and has offered policy advice to the Biden team .
“ So I hope there aren ’ t those kinds of litmus tests.
” It ’ s still too early to know how this will work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take staff jobs .
But some names are beginning to be privately bandied about by people with ties to the transition effort .
Laurene Powell Jobs , the philanthropist and wife of the late Steve Jobs , stirred some DC speculation that she might be interested in a role with her statement about her hopes for the new administration , a source told Recode .
Meg Whitman , the longtime tech executive who most recently served as the CEO of Quibi , is earning a look as a potential secretary of commerce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often appeared on calls for Biden ’ s national finance committee . )
Former presidential candidate and tech dystopian Andrew Yang has also attracted buzz and confirmed interest in serving as the country ’ s chief technology officer , a position that some Silicon Valley supporters hope will be at the Cabinet level .
But what casts a shadow over all of this jockeying is that Biden and his aides were , and will continue to be , reluctant to seem too cozy with high-profile tech insiders , according to people who have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these names matter so much is that Biden has largely kept Silicon Valley guessing about where exactly he falls when it comes to tech policy .
Over the course of the race , he and his aides made plain their disdain for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg , who Biden said was “ a real problem.
” But they had less to say about other tech giants .
Biden has promised to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act , a law that shields social media companies from lawsuits , but he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And he has sounded the alarm about corporate consolidation , but stopped short of calling for a breakup of Big Tech .
That lack of clarity has also been reflected in his personnel decisions thus far .
The 700 names on Biden ’ s “ Innovation Policy Committee , ” a working group of volunteers meant to help the campaign surface policy ideas , feature both industry insiders and prominent activists calling for a breakup .
Biden ’ s hiring of tech executives for his transition , such as Apple ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be seen as a capitulation to Big Tech — but it could also be read as Biden merely rehiring his former aides , including his former counsel , Hogan , who just happened to have spent a few years at the tech giants .
That all has given both sides reason for optimism .
So , too , has the presence of two senior Biden advisers , Bruce Reed and new chief of staff Ron Klain , who each have ties to tech leaders .
Both reformers and industry allies see them as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head of Common Sense Media and a prominent privacy critic of Big Tech , said he has passed along names and ideas to people like Reed , a close friend of his .
He is not naive and expects the tech industry to still have access to Biden , but not exclusive access like under Obama .
“ Do I think that the Biden administration is going to turn over his tech agenda to the industry ?
No , I do not , ” Steyer said .
“ They ’ re not going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tech industry.
” But if the old adage that “ personnel is policy ” is true , the next few weeks will reveal whether any of this optimism is misplaced .
But even before any compromises , there are already signs of just how much the Overton window has shifted when it comes to Silicon Valley over the last four years .
Before Election Day in 2016 , for example , Facebook ’ s No .
2 , Sheryl Sandberg , was seen as a leading contender to be secretary of the treasury @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four years later in an incoming Democratic administration , the possibility of a Treasury Secretary Sandberg seems unthinkable — if not downright ludicrous .

When it comes to Silicon Valley, Joe Biden is something of a blank slate. And for Silicon Valley, that means Joe Biden is something of an opportunity.
So Big Tech reformers and Big Tech allies are gearing up for a spirited fight in the coming months over the types of people who will staff the Biden administration. Those personnel decisions will offer some of the first revelations into how exactly the president-elect will regulate the tech industry and its titans, a high-stakes question about the American economy that he mostly avoided answering during his campaign.
That ambiguity is making the transition period all the more important, a dozen people with ties to the Biden team tell Recode. Reformers want to make sure they at least have a seat at the table and that they aren’t boxed out by well-paid industry interests. Forces aligned with the industry, meanwhile, want to make sure that a Biden administration isn’t too captive to the online left, even though they know it won’t resemble the halcyon days of Barack Obama.
Back then, Silicon Valley was a celebrated part of America’s innovation economy. Since Obama left office, though, the tech industry has become radioactive to parts of both the left and the right, part of a “techlash” that has culminated in calls to break up Big Tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Tech critics worry that these companies and their leaders have amassed too much control over Americans’ lives when it comes to privacy, the economy, and politics. Now Obama’s former No. 2 will have to answer these important questions on dicier terrain: Will he pursue this breakup? Will he inflame the tensions or cool them? Will he side more with the reformers or the industry?
The next few months will test the influence and muscle of both sides. Tech insiders have been among Biden’s biggest donors and are well-organized. But Biden has to be sensitive to a far left that is deeply skeptical of any corporate incursions — and is often louder.
“They’re in a difficult political situation,” said Rob Atkinson, the head of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank, who helped lead a tech advisory committee for Biden during the campaign. “It’s almost like a draft lottery for what team you want. You want to pick somebody on your team from the progressive wing and then somebody more from the tech or moderate wing. He’s going to have to do both.”
The draft has already begun: Phones are ringing across the tech industry as people close to the Biden campaign gauge some leaders’ interest in joining the administration and other Silicon Valley veterans hunt for inroads. Lobbyists and activists alike are researching names who they might want to push on Capitol Hill or disparage in the press. People in the Bay Area who raised money for Biden are being overwhelmed with requests to pass along resumes to his inner circle. And Biden’s team is encouraging experts who served on Biden’s tech advisory committee to apply for positions in the administration.
Flashpoints, too, have already emerged that speak to these new battle lines. Activists have grown concerned about a report that Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and a vocal defender of technology giants, was “being talked about” to lead a new tech task force out of the White House. (The report did not say who was doing this talking.)
On Monday, a dozen progressive groups wrote to the Biden transition effort to plead that Schmidt not be appointed to this task force. The letter — shared first with Recode — amounted to a warning shot not just about one particular tech billionaire but about the influence of the tech industry on politics more broadly.
“The appointment of Schmidt risks fracturing a Democratic coalition that your campaign and so many others worked so hard to build over the past several months,” said the letter-writers, which included activist groups like Demand Progress, the Revolving Door Project, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group allied with leading Big Tech critic Elizabeth Warren. “While the appointment of Schmidt may attract praise from certain elites in both Washington and Silicon Valley, it risks alienating an overwhelming majority of the electorate, including within the Democratic base, who want to see the economic power of major corporations reined in.”
Silicon Valley sources close to the Biden team tell Recode that they are unaware of any planned formal role for Schmidt and that they find one hard to believe given the optics of Big Tech. A source familiar with the matter said there have been no discussions between the Biden transition team and Schmidt about a role.
Sources do, however, expect Schmidt, a bipartisan veteran of the Washington scene who had wide influence during the Obama years but also has had complimentary things to say about Jared Kushner, to at least have considerable access to the Biden White House. There’s also the possibility that some aides at Schmidt’s philanthropic foundation, which is stacked with former Obama hands, will decamp for the new administration.
Schmidt and the Biden transition team declined to comment.
The battle over Schmidt is just one of several personnel fights that will likely play out in the first year of the new administration. Other key positions that tech voices will surely try to influence include the chairs of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, and the head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division — all roles that police tech giants’ behavior.
People allied with Big Tech say they aren’t concerned with developing blacklists of reformers who must be repelled. But they are concerned about the converse — that the progressives are organizing themselves to torpedo any and all people who worked in the industry, even if they have relevant policy expertise about complicated topics that would prove valuable to the country.
“You would really want to have an administration that doesn’t have industry voices as a part of it? That to me sounds like a really problematic outcome,” said Matt Perault, a former Facebook policy executive who now leads Duke’s Center on Science and Technology Policy and has offered policy advice to the Biden team. “So I hope there aren’t those kinds of litmus tests.”
It’s still too early to know how this will work out. Few heavyweights are ultimately expected to take staff jobs. But some names are beginning to be privately bandied about by people with ties to the transition effort.
Laurene Powell Jobs, the philanthropist and wife of the late Steve Jobs, stirred some DC speculation that she might be interested in a role with her statement about her hopes for the new administration, a source told Recode. Meg Whitman, the longtime tech executive who most recently served as the CEO of Quibi, is earning a look as a potential secretary of commerce. (Whitman, a Republican, often appeared on calls for Biden’s national finance committee.) Former presidential candidate and tech dystopian Andrew Yang has also attracted buzz and confirmed interest in serving as the country’s chief technology officer, a position that some Silicon Valley supporters hope will be at the Cabinet level.
But what casts a shadow over all of this jockeying is that Biden and his aides were, and will continue to be, reluctant to seem too cozy with high-profile tech insiders, according to people who have spoken with these aides.
The reason these names matter so much is that Biden has largely kept Silicon Valley guessing about where exactly he falls when it comes to tech policy. Over the course of the race, he and his aides made plain their disdain for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, who Biden said was “a real problem.” But they had less to say about other tech giants. Biden has promised to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that shields social media companies from lawsuits, but he’s released few details about that plan. And he has sounded the alarm about corporate consolidation, but stopped short of calling for a breakup of Big Tech.
That lack of clarity has also been reflected in his personnel decisions thus far. The 700 names on Biden’s “Innovation Policy Committee,” a working group of volunteers meant to help the campaign surface policy ideas, feature both industry insiders and prominent activists calling for a breakup. Biden’s hiring of tech executives for his transition, such as Apple’s top lobbyist, Cynthia Hogan, could be seen as a capitulation to Big Tech — but it could also be read as Biden merely rehiring his former aides, including his former counsel, Hogan, who just happened to have spent a few years at the tech giants.
That all has given both sides reason for optimism. So, too, has the presence of two senior Biden advisers, Bruce Reed and new chief of staff Ron Klain, who each have ties to tech leaders. Both reformers and industry allies see them as reasonable brokers.
Jim Steyer, the head of Common Sense Media and a prominent privacy critic of Big Tech, said he has passed along names and ideas to people like Reed, a close friend of his. He is not naive and expects the tech industry to still have access to Biden, but not exclusive access like under Obama.
“Do I think that the Biden administration is going to turn over his tech agenda to the industry? No, I do not,” Steyer said. “They’re not going to be bought and sold by the tech industry.”
But if the old adage that “personnel is policy” is true, the next few weeks will reveal whether any of this optimism is misplaced. But even before any compromises, there are already signs of just how much the Overton window has shifted when it comes to Silicon Valley over the last four years.
Before Election Day in 2016, for example, Facebook’s No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg, was seen as a leading contender to be secretary of the treasury in a Clinton administration.
Now, four years later in an incoming Democratic administration, the possibility of a Treasury Secretary Sandberg seems unthinkable — if not downright ludicrous.


vox--2020-11-17--Twitter announces Fleets and audio spaces, two new things Twitter didn’t really invent

The new feature — which has been tested in various markets this year — is called Fleets , and it looks an awful lot like Snapchat Stories .
Twitter is also testing out a new audio feature called audio spaces that largely resembles the embattled , invitation-based startup audio app Clubhouse which launched earlier this year .
Together , these new efforts show how Twitter , a famously public-facing platform , is attempting to expand how people interact on its platform .
Twitter , of course , is doing what Facebook has done many times : imitating aspects of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to stay on the same footing .
These new features also indicate that Twitter , like Facebook , is increasingly interested in private and group-based interactions .
Both new tools show that Twitter wants to appeal to users who might be more reluctant to share publicly and permanently on the platform .
In terms of active users , Twitter is still quite a bit smaller than Facebook , Instagram , or TikTok .
“ It ’ s no surprise that the typical conversation on Twitter is a short burst of high-brevity exchanges back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour .
“ That ’ s very powerful .
But if we want to allow for a wider range of conversations to unfold , we need to support other formats .
We need to support other use cases that help people have more thoughtful debate , more thoughtful exchanges , that you can ’ t pack into 280 characters.
” The new Fleets feature , for example , allows users to post to their followers content that disappears after 24 hours .
It really does look a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Snapchat .
Just as they are on Facebook and Instagram Stories , links to Fleets appear in the top portion of the Twitter app , and they ’ re also accessible by clicking through someone ’ s account profile picture .
Like Instagram and Snapchat Stories , people will be able to share reactions to other tweets , videos , and photos .
Eventually , users will be able to incorporate stickers and live broadcasts , the company said .
Notably , Twitter has not built a way to prevent someone from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a way to provide a notification when someone takes a screenshot of your tweet .
Importantly , Fleets can ’ t be retweeted or shared .
Replies to Fleets will be private and will function as part of Twitter ’ s existing direct message system .
The goal , in part , is to beckon users reluctant to post publicly on the app to engage in this way .
Again , Fleets launches today worldwide , so every Twitter user , including President Trump , will have access to the new feature .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ an audio-based conversation tool .
Spaces builds on the audio tweets feature Twitter launched earlier this year that allowed people to post recordings of their voice up to 140 seconds long .
That tool has continued to roll out through this fall , and the company is also incorporating transcription features in 2021 , following criticisms that the tool isn ’ t accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing .
The idea behind audio spaces is to make Twitter ’ s audio feature more conversational .
With the new feature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start a conversation and then allow others to participate or listen in .
The company likens the feature to a “ well-hosted dinner party ” and anticipates that the tool will be used for debate .
Yes , it looks a lot like Clubhouse .
Audio spaces won ’ t be available to the general public yet .
Twitter still plans to do some experimenting and — also like Clubhouse — plans to start rolling out the feature through a limited number of invitations .
“ We are going to launch this first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group of people , a group of people who are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform , women and those from marginalized backgrounds , ” said Maya Gold Patterson , a staff designer at the platform .
The company reiterated that all content on Twitter , including Fleets and audio spaces , is subject to Twitter ’ s rules .
Just like regular tweets , Fleets are also subject to Twitter ’ s various labels , including those for false or misleading content .
While these new and upcoming features @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new things on its platform , they will also invite new challenges in content moderation .
With audio spaces , for example , Twitter must tackle the tricky , technical question of moderating live audio content .
Clubhouse has faced an uphill battle in creating and enforcing rules for its platform and recently came under scrutiny after a 300-person conversation devolved into anti-Semitic commentary .
At the same time , the Fleets feature provides a new avenue for misinformation to spread , and the push toward more direct messages means non-public content is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Still , we shouldn ’ t expect Twitter to stop experimenting anytime soon .
The company says it ’ s still studying how well its election season product modifications worked , and has hinted that it may continue to tinker with those features .
Twitter is also exploring ways of facilitating private apologies and promoting forgiveness in an effort to encourage more empathy on the platform .
Just last month , company CEO Jack Dorsey hinted that he ’ s interested in letting users choose their own algorithms , a move that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
All these moves are signs that the platform isn ’ t interested in limiting itself to what it ’ s done before — and a reminder that social media companies still feel perfectly comfortable ripping off each other ’ s products .
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network .
All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists .

Twitter is finally letting users post ephemeral content, starting today.
The new feature — which has been tested in various markets this year — is called Fleets, and it looks an awful lot like Snapchat Stories. Twitter is also testing out a new audio feature called audio spaces that largely resembles the embattled, invitation-based startup audio app Clubhouse which launched earlier this year. Together, these new efforts show how Twitter, a famously public-facing platform, is attempting to expand how people interact on its platform.
Twitter, of course, is doing what Facebook has done many times: imitating aspects of its competitors’ successful products in an attempt to stay on the same footing. These new features also indicate that Twitter, like Facebook, is increasingly interested in private and group-based interactions. Both new tools show that Twitter wants to appeal to users who might be more reluctant to share publicly and permanently on the platform. In terms of active users, Twitter is still quite a bit smaller than Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
“It’s no surprise that the typical conversation on Twitter is a short burst of high-brevity exchanges back and forth between multiple people,” said Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour. “That’s very powerful. But if we want to allow for a wider range of conversations to unfold, we need to support other formats. We need to support other use cases that help people have more thoughtful debate, more thoughtful exchanges, that you can’t pack into 280 characters.”
The new Fleets feature, for example, allows users to post to their followers content that disappears after 24 hours. It really does look a lot like Stories on Facebook and Instagram — and Snapchat. Just as they are on Facebook and Instagram Stories, links to Fleets appear in the top portion of the Twitter app, and they’re also accessible by clicking through someone’s account profile picture.
Like Instagram and Snapchat Stories, people will be able to share reactions to other tweets, videos, and photos. Eventually, users will be able to incorporate stickers and live broadcasts, the company said. Notably, Twitter has not built a way to prevent someone from taking a screenshot of a Fleet or a way to provide a notification when someone takes a screenshot of your tweet.
Importantly, Fleets can’t be retweeted or shared. Replies to Fleets will be private and will function as part of Twitter’s existing direct message system. The goal, in part, is to beckon users reluctant to post publicly on the app to engage in this way. Again, Fleets launches today worldwide, so every Twitter user, including President Trump, will have access to the new feature.
Then there’s audio spaces, an audio-based conversation tool. Spaces builds on the audio tweets feature Twitter launched earlier this year that allowed people to post recordings of their voice up to 140 seconds long. That tool has continued to roll out through this fall, and the company is also incorporating transcription features in 2021, following criticisms that the tool isn’t accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
The idea behind audio spaces is to make Twitter’s audio feature more conversational. With the new feature, a user will be able to start a conversation and then allow others to participate or listen in. The company likens the feature to a “well-hosted dinner party” and anticipates that the tool will be used for debate. Yes, it looks a lot like Clubhouse.
Audio spaces won’t be available to the general public yet. Twitter still plans to do some experimenting and — also like Clubhouse — plans to start rolling out the feature through a limited number of invitations.
“We are going to launch this first experiment of spaces to a very small group of people, a group of people who are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform, women and those from marginalized backgrounds,” said Maya Gold Patterson, a staff designer at the platform.
The company reiterated that all content on Twitter, including Fleets and audio spaces, is subject to Twitter’s rules. Just like regular tweets, Fleets are also subject to Twitter’s various labels, including those for false or misleading content.
While these new and upcoming features are an attempt to get users doing new things on its platform, they will also invite new challenges in content moderation. With audio spaces, for example, Twitter must tackle the tricky, technical question of moderating live audio content. Clubhouse has faced an uphill battle in creating and enforcing rules for its platform and recently came under scrutiny after a 300-person conversation devolved into anti-Semitic commentary. At the same time, the Fleets feature provides a new avenue for misinformation to spread, and the push toward more direct messages means non-public content is less accessible to other users and moderators.
Still, we shouldn’t expect Twitter to stop experimenting anytime soon. The company says it’s still studying how well its election season product modifications worked, and has hinted that it may continue to tinker with those features. Twitter is also exploring ways of facilitating private apologies and promoting forgiveness in an effort to encourage more empathy on the platform. Just last month, company CEO Jack Dorsey hinted that he’s interested in letting users choose their own algorithms, a move that could dramatically alter Twitter as we know it.
All these moves are signs that the platform isn’t interested in limiting itself to what it’s done before — and a reminder that social media companies still feel perfectly comfortable ripping off each other’s products.
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.