If I convince millions of people that Example companies widgets kills kittens, when I have no reason to believe that to be the case, I would be held liable for the damage to the brand.

But the pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet and most platforms, and even trying to avoid problems like the Streisand effect allow damaging speech to avoid consequence.

I'm not advocating for any approach to fix the problem, this is just a curiosity of mine as of late.

It depends what you meant. The law doesn't give carte blanche to say whatever you want, however you want, either. Your example above is what libel and slander laws are about. People make (probably millions) of false claims about companies daily and none of them rise to the level of a credible accusation largely because they're done anonymously. Someone who could actually "convince millions of people" probably has at least SOMETHING damning, and if they don't, the backpressure from everyone else is going to be pretty intense. That's actually _normal_. Desirable.

_Some_ speech _does_ require freedom from damage because otherwise the direct effect is the chilling effect. Political speech is specifically one type of such speech. The internet really has forced us to look carefully at what kinds of speech warrant that protection and which don't and we clearly haven't figured it out yet.

But certainly giving that power to private companies - and removing it from the hands of the people, the government, the law, the courts, and posterity -- is _definitively not_ the right way to do it.

I think the really difficult part about all of it is, the areas that don't require protections, aren't because the speech isn't damaging, it's that an uneven application of the rules can lead to worse problems. Or issues where it's impossible to find objective neutral parties (a jury) to decide on issues central to politics.

You don't need to unplug the bullhorn if there is no bullhorn.

It shouldn't be up to absolutely obviously partisan corporations to decide which October surprise info dump is misinformation deserving of censorship, and which is the aok rough and tumble of presidential electioneering.

Finally, on the facts, the Steele dossier was far more obviously fraudulent than pictures of hunter smoking a crack pipe in the bathtub...

They are trying to claim control only when it suits them and not when there may be liability. Can't have it both ways.

Why? I pick up a piece of rubbish from the ground, so I'm responsible for everything that anyone litters? It doesn't make any sense.

Twitter isn't claiming they prevent every type of bad on their platform, they're just trying to prevent one type of bad for now

And the network can make that happen on its own, without an algorithm reordering content - if someone I follow is retweeting something that someone they follow retweeted.

I guess the line is so blurred because often these aren't "people" but often institutions, governments and those intending to shape public opinion, even bots in some cases.

You're talking about it like Twitter is censoring someone specifically but it's so much more complicated and nuanced than that.