Again: There is no reason internet-based media can't act like their paper counterparts. The only plausible reason is because nobody wants liability, but hey: You modify user generated content in any way, /you the publisher/ are now liable for it.
Social media platforms are default-allow. If they were default-deny, it would take months to get your newsfeed posts approved.
Newspapers were also not designed to be a way for readers to express themselves. Social media platforms exist so that users can express themselves.
I'm not saying that social media companies are doing a good job, or that their moderation practices are good, or that their quest for increasing engagement above all else is good. In fact I wouldn't mind if FB, Twitter, etc. just disappeared tomorrow. But comparing them to newspapers is just not a reasonable thing to do.
The amount of user generated content in comments, letters to the editor etc is tiny and was moderated by a single person.
It is simply incomparable to the estimated 500 million tweets a day by Twitter:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/04/14/twitter-statis...
Equality before the law. If your business can't adapt it should die.
Here's a thought: there's nothing that says that Twitter and friends have to exist. There was a time when being able to comply with the law was part of the business model, not a minor obstacle that needed to be worked around.
As a (purely hypothetical) heroin dealer, I can't run a business if I keep getting thrown in jail. What's the solution?
What's the solution? New legislation that adapts to such a threat to societal welfare. And this is what is effectively happening here with litigation over Section 230 et al. (worth mentioning that it's not even the case that Twitter's business model involves working around the law; Section 230 _is_ the law and it shields Twitter from liability. So there is really no case here like you are describing to begin with.)
The end of society and government is more or less to identify and avoid bad societal outcomes, and an evolving legal system is necessary to keep up with technological and social changes in the world. Maybe you are correct and Twitter shouldn't exist to begin with, alas Twitter exists and other things like Twitter exist. They aren't currently in grave violation of any law to my knowledge, and any law that is to be enacted regarding things like Twitter should be written in light of the current state of the world, which is that Twitter exists and that things like Twitter are easy to create.
They did this so that hypothetical you can't dodge the law by tweaking molecules and that new legislation doesn't have to be enacted every time you come up with a new recipe.
I'm not saying that twitter shouldn't exist, I'm just saying that it and platforms like it don't have to exist in their current state. Section 230 _is_ the workaround that didn't have to be created just so that the platforms could operate outside of the regulations that other publishers are bound by
Honestly what you've done there is present a good case for why dealing heroin should be legal.
No. I am simply pointing out that comparing print media to online makes no sense.