They are. It is called "The Communications Act of 1934" in the United States. They are completely regulated by the FCC in US. They are regulated differently in different countries. In US, as an example, they have rules on political advertising. They have "equal time" rules where every political candidate "must" be given equal time and opportunity to air their viewpoints. No such regulations exist for social media companies.
They can be held liable for fake news or slander. Social media platforms cannot. Only the content posted in the editorial is considered personal opinion and not the position of the News Organization. That is the only page/section in the newspaper/news that does not expose the News Organization to liability/slander. That is why you have a separate "Editorial Section" in a newspaper where the editor can give his/her opinions without exposing the newspaper to liability. But of late, the news agencies have started using other pages for giving their opinions too (from harmless clickbait to downright slander) which is again a very risky choice to make. This exposes them to liability/slander. This is why regulation is so important. To ensure what is legally allowed and not allowed. News agencies are bound by such regulations. Social media organizations are not.
If news agencies publishes a hit piece on me that is obviously false, I can sue the news organization for slander. The news organization cannot claim that it believed the news reporter/agent who passed on wrong information about me and get away with it. The ultimate publisher is the news agency. Period. That is why the organization can be sued.
But if a user posts a hit piece on me in a social media platform I cannot sue the platform for allowing the user to post slanderous material. Because the platform shields itself from liability by taking advantage of the provisions of Section 230. This is because it calls itself a "platform" and not a "publisher". This is fine by me as long as it remains a platform. But once it starts censoring opinions (like Twitter/Facebook deleting Trump's tweet) then it no longer is a platform. It is now behaving as a publisher. Then why should it be protected by Section 230?
> because that exposes them to civil liability
Exactly. They are regulated. Even if a news agent publishes a fake story, the organization is responsible for it. They cannot carry it forward without verification because if they do, they end up becoming liable. Not the news agent. That is the whole point. The recent case that comes to mind is when Nick Sandmann was falsely accused of being racist against a Native American by all left-leaning media organizations (CNN, Washington Post etc). When the fact were completely different (if you watch the video in its entirety). He sued these media organizations and won. They had to settle the 250 million $ lawsuit. Can he sue Facebook/Twitter which carried this story more than any of the media organizations did? Nope. That is the reason why I say that social media organizations enjoys powers that neither the US Government nor the Media enjoys.
> There's no obligation to show the President's content there either. They can choose not to show right-leaning or left-leaning content
Yes that is right. But when they do show the President, then they have to let him have his say. They cannot either censor him or change what he meant. If they do that then they open themselves up to defamation/liability depending on what they actually did. Social media companies do not have any such issues as they are unregulated.
You can read more about Media Regulation in the United States here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/americangovernment/chapter...
The whole point of Section 230 is to allow platforms to moderate their content without becoming liable for it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/13/610/section-230-...
> The classic example involves Yelp, explains Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval Academy and author of The Twenty-Six Words That Created The Internet, a book about Section 230. If someone posts a defamatory restaurant review on Yelp, Section 230 ensures that the restaurant can sue the person who wrote the review, but not Yelp itself. It protects everything from Facebook and YouTube to the recently deplatformed 8chan.
> Section 230 also says that platforms can’t be held liable if they take down any content they or their users consider “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” In other words, they are not obliged to host anything they don’t want to.
I am not against Section 230. I am against platforms misusing Section 230. They are a platform until they behave like one. When the platform itself starts behaving like a publisher rather than a platform then why should provisions of Section 230 apply?
> Section 230 also says that platforms can’t be held liable if they take down any content they or their users consider “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” In other words, they are not obliged to host anything they don’t want to.
So was Trump's video about kids being "almost immune" to Coronavirus "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable"? Which one was it? Are you seriously telling me that the President of the United States video about kids being "almost immune" to Coronavirus is in some violation of policy while porn/gore content that is posted on these platforms not? I have personally reported so many of these videos and they still haven't been removed. And if political issues are the reason for censorship then what about the other politicians in US and around the World who say as bad or worse things as Trump? Will same rules be applied there as well or not? If not, why not?
> In other words, they are not obliged to host anything they don’t want to.
Then will these rules be applicable to everyone? In that case, I can give you a million tweets and comments that are "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable" which haven't been removed yet. Nor has Youtube removed "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable" videos from its platform.
It is clear bias at play here. If you try to tell me that it is not then you need to take a hike.
The law was designed to allow platforms to remove content without being legally liable for all of the content. If you disagree with that then you disagree with all of S230, and you need to campaign to have it removed and replaced.
> So was Trump's video about kids being "almost immune" to Coronavirus "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable"? Which one was it
It was "otherwise objectionable", because it's factually incorrect. Children do get covid-19, children do spread covid-19. They're unlikely to be harmed by covid-19, but that's not the claim he made, is it?
> > In other words, they are not obliged to host anything they don’t want to.
> Then will these rules be applicable to everyone?
I genuinely don't understand how you don't understand this. "not obliged to host it" means "they don't have to host it", it doesn't mean "they have to search out everything that violates their policies and remove it".
There is no need to campaign really. I am not an American but US laws govern these social media companies that operate in India too. I have experienced first hand how these social media companies operate here in India and know their biases clearly.
But the US Government is already exploring it: https://www.project-disco.org/innovation/072920-what-is-sect...
and here: https://gosar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
> It was "otherwise objectionable", because it's factually incorrect
I don't understand "otherwise objectionable" to mean "factually incorrect". There are people who genuinely get a wrong idea of some process or procedure because not everyone is technically well versed. If I tomorrow say that stuxnet virus harmed my PC the technical minded you might say that it is factually incorrect because stuxnet is a worm and not a virus. So would you then censor my right to say it incorrectly? Do you want me to communicate to you perfectly and if not, that communication must be censored? Any reasonable person will allow that much of leeway. Not everyone can have perfect communication skills. Not everyone can be well versed in everything.
Anyways the point is that "otherwise objectionable" is too broad a term. For me, killing animals for food is objectionable. For you something else might be objectionable. That sort of power is not reasonable by any means for a platform to have. For instance, Twitter did not censor Ilhan Omar when she tweeted falsehood against Nick Sandmann and other Covington students. She later deleted that tweet when the true story came out into the open. But the damage was done. An innocent student's life was put at risk. All because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"In her tweet, Omar wrote that the male students were "protesting a woman's right to choose & yelled 'it's not rape if you enjoy it' " and "taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants.""
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/426635-omar-deletes-tweet...
and this:
https://twitter.com/NRCC/status/1088163426172633095
Did Twitter act on it? Nope. Why did it not when it was not just factually incorrect but also put a child's life at risk?
But truth be told I don't want Twitter to act on any content that is not illegal (like child pornography, terrorism, scams etc). In true spirit of Section 230, I want her tweets to remain for as long as she desires so people see for themselves what she represents. I want Trump's tweets to remain for as long as he desires so people see for themselves what he represents. Now that is a free platform right there.
I don't want social media companies to baby sit me. I don't want social media companies to tell me what to see and what not to see unless that material is banned/disallowed by law. I don't want my viewpoints censored because it doesn't match with the ones running the platform. Is that too much to ask for?
> They're unlikely to be harmed by covid-19, but that's not the claim he made, is it?
"Almost immune" qualifies as "unlikely to be harmed". Unless we both are referring to different dictionaries. This is nitpicking to be honest with you. It is only because it was Trump who said it that it is being made into a huge issue. Just like everyone took objection to Trump calling it Wuhan/China Virus when every outlet (CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc) was calling it by that name way before Trump even said it. Because "orange man bad".
> I genuinely don't understand how you don't understand this. "not obliged to host it" means "they don't have to host it", it doesn't mean "they have to search out everything that violates their policies and remove it".
It means precisely that. They have to search out everything that violates their policies and remove it. Because they said they are incapable of doing that, activist groups demanded them to provide tools which can be used to report such violations. But those tools are pretty much useless as I have repeatedly tried removing videos that blatantly violate their own policies but to no avail. Pornographic and Gore content is not allowed on Youtube according to Youtube's own guidelines. Yet those videos don't get removed and instead get "Age restricted". Because clearly they want that ad money more than following the rule of law.
As for Section 230 protections for civil liability: Instead of suing the platform where the content was posted for slander, you'd sue the individual that posted it. S230 protections do not extend to where the platform's own speech (ex, Twitter's blog), and they don't shield the actual speaker, where you can still recover damages. Your own example goes to this end - Twitter didn't publish anything, CNN did, and he was able to convince a court that it was slander, so he was able to recover from CNN.
So are media networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc. They are private too. But they are still regulated. They can't post whatever they want and are held liable for any news that they present to their audience. Social media companies aren't regulated in the same way. They have more powers than the Government because they can literally censor anyone's speech they want. They can ban anyone they want. If they are left-leaning they can ban right-leaning content. If they are right-leaning they can ban left-leaning content. They are also not regulated like media networks because they are given immunity from liability through Section 230. They can never be held liable for what is posted on their platform. It is like having the cake and eating it too. Heck, they can even censor the US President's tweets and videos. This makes them extremely powerful. It is surprising to me that US citizens are perfectly fine with this setup.