As readers will know, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter have been on a purge of conservative content and users, using “community standards” as the excuse. But in doing so, these social media companies are acting not only discriminatingly, but also in violation of what gives them the ability to exist in the first place.
Normally, as a publisher, you’re responsible for what is published on your site. That’s one reason why, for example, The BFD vets its commenting section to make sure no one says anything that could be considered libellous.
Now imagine you’re a social media company like Facebook or Twitter where users create millions of posts. If you had to check every post it would be impossible for you to operate. How do Facebook, Twitter etc get around this? By defining themselves as platforms.
Platforms are protected by law from libel. By definition, they provide a service and that’s it. They are, or should be, content agnostic.
Now getting back to “community standards”. In order to decide whether a post violates “community standards” the platform must be aware or made aware of the content of the post. In other words, the platform is no longer content agnostic. In deciding that the post violates “community standards” the platform is acting as a publisher.
Social media companies have no right to decide for themselves what is ‘conservative’ or what could ‘incite violence’ etc. The only thing they can do is remove content when required to by law, such as content that is obviously illegal.
Social media companies are platforms not publishers. They are out of line and need to be held to account.
