To be honest, these platforms are whatever one is more convenient for them at the time. Is someone doing something controversial/unpopular on their platform/attacking them? Then they're a 'publisher' with the right to dictate what's allowed. Are they getting sued/complained about for illegal content/not moderating their site? Then suddenly they're a 'platform', who only has to handle issues when forced to.
That's the truth about all online services; they change what they class themselves as whenever the alternative is too 'inconvenient' for them.
I've also changed my stance on it, mostly because I think these companies have become too influential over people.
There's a difference between a scrappy company hosting content for people and a company hosting such a large percentage of the worlds opinions in media form and moderating those opinions with no oversight.
I'd rather fancy a system where such platforms can choose between being a publisher and a platform.
If they be a publisher, they may take editorial control but the also become liable for anything that escaped their control and can no longer claim “The views expressed here are not our own.”.
In the alternative, they can be a platform, and may not take editorial control and only be required and allowed to remove content they are legally required to remove.
The current situation is that they want their cake and eat it too.
So long as certain content (that is not restricted by external forces, i.e. the law) is prohibited from the platform, I fail to see why they should be considered anything other than a publisher. If the platform can only be used for content they approve of, they can't be defined as anything else.
I agree and is not because they are making money out of you (that's fine if you agree) it's mostly because they aren't censorship proof or ideologically neutral.
There is outright censorship, or rather removing topics that the owner of the platform doesn't like, and then there is the much more serious problem of creating echo chambers for the users where dissenting opinions are not deleted, but hidden.
I think we should make a distinction between platforms and publishers. A publisher curates content according to their opinion, to the extent that when they publish outside opinions, they add a disclaimer like "Opinions expressed herein do not represent those of the publisher". There's no such disclaimer on reddit, Twitter, or Facebook because people understand that the posts aren't coming from the platform. These sites aren't a place for the owners to express their opinion; they're a mechanism for the users to communicate.
And when the mechanisms of communication are privately owned, freedom of speech can't exist if the owners censor those mechanisms.
Platforms (as opposed to publishers) should be treated like telephone companies or the mail or ISPs. They shouldn't even read the messages they carry, let alone censor them.
On the other hand, sites aren't required to be a platform, but if they choose to act like a publisher then they should be held responsible for the content they publish.
But they aren't generating the content, users are. Why should they be responsible for what you say? And it's their platform, why are you entitled to it insofar they can't moderate?
Can Amazon not kick people off their servers without being responsible as a publisher? At what point can a company no longer decide what happens within their ecosystem?
I thought we appreciated freedom of speech in the US, and that includes freedom to ignore speech.
I think it’s important to separate the actions and intents of the company from their users. Any platform that has free speech as a core value will tend to attract objectionable people and content. That wiki page is mostly about the horrible things some of their users say and do.
All these communications platforms with any significant user base editorialise, even *chan, Parler, darknet sites, etc ven the ones that say they don't. Otherwise they'd be flooded with spam, griefing, child porn, moderate or left wing opinions, etc. That's why spammers have always been advocating for maximalist 'free speech' rights for access to platforms. Given this, it's simply up to each platform owner to determine their editorial policy.
That depends on what the purpose of the platform is, and since the owner had previously made a point of being keen on free speech, it's interesting that it's actually not being run in line with those ideals at all. We're now seeing that the carve outs from free speech include things that might reduce profit, and the reposting of public flight data.
This confounds the difference between a platform and a publisher. If you chose what to publish, you're a publisher. That means you chose to speak, or not to.
A platform does not chose, but merely let's people speak -- or if it doesn't it interferes with free speech.
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