Admit It, Tech CEOs: You’re Publishers

> And the largest digital players have argued that they’re mere technology “platforms” rather than “publishers” to preserve the shield Section 230 provides them. This has helped stave off regulation and spared them the expense of complying with the corporate and social responsibilities that come with it.

No. No it does not. When will this canard end?

Section 230 means that users are responsible for their own speech, not the companies hosting the speech. Whether or not a website is a "platform" or a "publisher" has zero bearing on this [1].

1. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

I'd have the faintest concern for this line of reasoning if it left any space what-so-ever for safe harbor & platforms. It doesn't. It's litmus is mid way through:

> Yet time and again, social media unleashes one kraken after another despite all of those good intentions and despite the dog-and-pony shows Congress hosts.

Bearing content does not make you a publisher. That there are dangers & risks to hosting people's content does not change that. That people post awful wrong disinformation & all sorts of terrible stuff does not make one a publisher.

I do think there's some arguments to be made that the algorithms in use do equate to some level of support/vetting for content that moves these entities closer to publishers, but changing that, allowing reddit style democratic sorting, would not fix where we are at.

I continue to think the main issue is not that these platforms haven't self regulated, or that there isn't enough oversight / regulation from above. I continue to think what is absent is bottom up regulation. We lack our own meta-network in which we can share & rate what these social media systems provide to us, communicate & warn each other & support each other more broadly, and reflect & see which of these moderations we support & which are bad, and meta-moderate. Not shaping a concensus view! But better attuning & reinforcing each other in an organic manner.

The current debates just seem so un-interesting, all seem so harmful, so wrong. They all rely on inserting authoritarianism in to the system. The corporations have clearly not used their platform authoritarianism to good effect, we all agree. And I for one think they have a right to suck. But we, us, we have a right to communicate & connect, to build meta- & moderation subsystems of our own, to better enhance our experience as we travel across sites, across platforms. We have an obligation to improve our own democratic, social conditions. I don't see yet that permission or regulation is entailed in that; it's still, somewhat, I dare say, on us, a diffuse us, a distributed obligation of civic minded people.