by Bob Walsh
Twitter and similar problems are, generally speaking, immune from lawsuit because they have been considered to be forums and not publishers. That may have just changed.
Twitter has just decided it is appropriate to "fact check" the President's tweets. They have, thus far, done this ONLY to Trump as far as I know. Clearly the powers that be at Twitter hate Trump. That's cool. They can do that. However, if they become a publisher (or a public utility) they can easily move from being largely legally immune from the crazy shit people post to a not-so-much position.
I admit to being of two minds about Twitter. It is an open sewer, where any dingaling can post pretty much anything and pretend to be a "real" journalist. In addition I wish to hell Trump would stay off of it. However it does give him a direct pipeline to the people without being filtered by content monitors, handlers or lawyers. Many of Trump's followers dig it. Others tolerate it.
I can't believe the people at Twitter are idiots. They are, however, partisans. It is conceivable to me that their decision makers told their lawyers to pound sand and they were going to do what they wanted to do.
Oh well, what the hell. Lawyers have to do something to earn their pound of flesh.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Trump's threat to issue an executive order shutting down social media is an empty threat because he does not have the power to do so.
2 comments:
Bob, I agree. Once twitter begins to control content they will become publishers.
He kind-of did it about 4:30 yesterday. Maybe not well nor smartly, but he sort-of did.
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