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joeri1505 t1_j28takf wrote

Publishers choose what content to distribute and in what way. Platforms provide a place where people can distribute their own content.

No social media platforms corrects your spelling or advises you to change the name of your main character.

At most, they remove content that is highly inappropriate or illegal

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mb83 t1_j28t88c wrote

Because they don’t produce the news articles themselves, they provide a way for people to share them.

If you cut a newspaper article out and mail it to someone, the post office isn’t the publisher, just a way of getting the information from one place to another. Same idea.

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jasongetsdown t1_j28wpy0 wrote

Sharing things other people wrote is just another way to say publication. The real reason is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which explicitly exempts them from being treated as a publisher: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”

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Lithuim t1_j28t64b wrote

That’s more a political and lobbying question than one of actual definitions.

They’re classified as “platforms” because they desperately lobby the world’s governments to be classified as such - removing most liability for whatever garbage people post.

Changing them to a “publisher” would be catastrophic for their business model, as they are now liable for everything that gets posted.

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A_Garbage_Truck t1_j28uvgp wrote

if they were "publishers" in legal terms they would be liable for the content that gets posted. that is REALLY bad for their business model as if you know the internet you know its not a matter of "if" but "when" someone posts something that they really shouldnt have.

so these businesses push hard against being defined as publishers and instead coin the term " platform" to remove them from legal liability.

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jasongetsdown t1_j28xigo wrote

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 explicitly exempts ISPs and other online platforms like social media from being treated as publishers of the content shared on their platforms.

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

This is literally the only reason such services are not liable for what they host. They would otherwise be treated the same as newspapers, magazines, or book publishers.

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