They are pretty clearly acting as a publisher, as they exercise editorial control over what user content they choose to publish. They are not like a telephone, which just passes everything through regardless of content.
Under American law, a business has the right to refuse service to customers, but you can't discriminate against customers based on certain clearly enumerated factors such as race, religion, sex or national origin. Facebook is not a public utility and has no duty to serve.
They are also not a communication monopoly, because they are not the only way you can communicate online. You are free to use E-mail, telephone, and many other messaging systems that do not moderate content.
I'm not sure what the rest of your comment (Rosa Parks, EPA and lockdowns) has to do with Facebook's business.
> They are pretty clearly acting as a publisher, as they exercise editorial control over what user content they choose to publish. They are not like a telephone, which just passes everything through regardless of content.
Funny enough, FB used the exact opposite excuse to get away with anything they get sued for. Section 230 was supposed to only apply for platforms, not publishers. Publishers like NYTimes can be sued for knowingly publishing false libellous content. But you can't sue FB for the same because they claim to be a platform while acting as publishers. Currently they are "having their cake and eating it too".
> I'm not sure what the rest of your comment (Rosa Parks, EPA and lockdowns) has to do with Facebook's business.
It has to do with how your logic was used by people in the past to discriminate based on race. The "it's a private company" crowd forget that at one point, segregation, Jim Crow, slavery etc were all allowed. We had to write laws to prevent that from happening. Same needs to be done with any company which has more than a million user generated content users.
> They are also not a communication monopoly, because they are not the only way you can communicate online.
I have already addressed this in my original comment but you are cherry picking and ignoring it.
This is a far-too-common complete misunderstanding of the law.
Section 230 says that web sites are not liable for user generated content. If facebook published a blog post, authored by facebook, you could sue them for that. But you can't sue them for a comment made my another user, much as you couldn't sue the NYT for a comment someone left on their website.
Note that in both contexts, the NYT and Facebook are both acting as publishers, but are still not liable for the user generated content.
One can choose to moderate content, and still retain section 230 protections, in fact that's the entire point of 230, to encourage sites to moderate content without increasing their liability. The legal context, original authors, and judicial history all support that interpretation.
> We had to write laws to prevent that from happening.
Well, you're simplifying a bit here. Jim crow, slavery, etc. were all legally mandated. But you're correct that when the forms of mandated discrimination were no longer mandated, many were also made illegal.
That's different when Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are hiding behind the disguise of "algorithms" to push content they like and throttle content they don't like. The "trending" or "for you" or "promoted" etc are all decisions made by the platforms. It's well known that the "trending" videos on YouTube or posts on Twitter are not actually organic.
When they use "algorithms", they are equivalent to publishing. Similar to how newspapers can't just publish everything. They make editorial decisions on what to publish and what not to. The "algorithms" are the editorial decisions. That makes them a publisher. How's this a misunderstanding of the law?
> When they use "algorithms", they are equivalent to publishing. Similar to how newspapers can't just publish everything.
No, that's the point. Facebook, even if it moderates content, and no matter how it moderates content, still isn't liable for failing to moderate some content.
The misunderstanding is so completely fundamental: Section 230 doesn't actually make any distinction between "platforms" and "publishers" that entire distinction was made up by conservative pundits.
The relevant section of 230 is, in full "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (there's more, but it has to do specifically with child porn). You can't "lose" section 230 protection by doing or failing to do certain things or acting in a certain way. The law just doesn't include anything about that.
> When they use "algorithms", they are equivalent to publishing.
No, moderation is not equivalent to publishing, and the legislative history of section 230 makes this incredibly clear. Prior to 230, a website operator had two options: they could attempt to moderate content, but in doing so invite liability, or they could do no moderation at all and have no liability. Section 230 provided "good samaritan" protections to allow site operators to moderate user-generated content without inviting additional liability (the wikipedia section has a good rundown of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Background_and_pas...).
So yeah, there's no such thing as a platform, everyone is a publisher, and all publishers have section 230 protection which allows them to moderate user generated content without inviting liability. You've been lied to about the law. It is intended to allow website operators to engage in certain forms of "editorial decisions". That's the point. That's why congress passed it.
"Promoted content" and fake "Trending" is moderation now? Sounds like "moderation" is being used as a head fake for publishing.
You are talking about how things are right now and I am talking about how things should be to make things fair. 2 very different things.
Your logic would have been used to claim slavery/segregation/Jim Crow/railroads is okay because it's the law!
Trillion dollar companies deciding what can and can't be said, promoting some view points, and suppressing others. They've gone from platforms to publishers. That's how we get the "lab leak" debacle.
> You are talking about how things are right now and I am talking about how things should be to make things fair. 2 very different things.
You may have pivoted to that now, but no, you started by talking about what you believed the law was, and how you thought Facebook was breaking it.
I have no problem with you being of the opinion that we should regulate publishers. I mean it's usually a first amendment violation, but I too want some of those on occasion. However just understand that the law does not, and never has, made a distinction between a platform and publisher. That difference was invented in like 2017.
Online “platforms” have always been publishers; CDA Section 230 was adopted expressly to preserve that without exposing them to traditional publisher liability.
Under American law, a business has the right to refuse service to customers, but you can't discriminate against customers based on certain clearly enumerated factors such as race, religion, sex or national origin. Facebook is not a public utility and has no duty to serve.
They are also not a communication monopoly, because they are not the only way you can communicate online. You are free to use E-mail, telephone, and many other messaging systems that do not moderate content.
I'm not sure what the rest of your comment (Rosa Parks, EPA and lockdowns) has to do with Facebook's business.