POV: Are platforms more like newspapers or telcos?
the supreme court will decide and the impacts are significant
During a brief break from March Madness games last week, we dipped into a 60 minutes segment about the supreme court currently hearing cases that may change the social media landscape substantially (segment here). I put my snacks and bracket down and sat up. This is a familiar topic for me but with a plot twist I never could’ve predicted in 2016. (although maybe I should have!)
The heart of the question is whether social media companies have the right to decide what users can say/publish on their platforms.
Should a platform be thought of like a newspaper (have free speech rights to make their own decisions based on their editorial standards, oversights and a POV ) or like a telephone company (a vessel for communication with no obligation to filter).
There were a pair of laws passed in Texas and Florida that consider social media a vessel. If upheld, platforms could be forced to carry everything including hate speech and medical misinformation.
Platforms have content moderation teams that prevent this type of content from disseminating but the laws were passed because many conservatives feel that the moderation practices unfairly also moderate out conservative view points.
When I worked in social media (2014- 2022), the platform I worked for definitively did not want to be the editorial business. I was often reminded
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