Social media has become a massive component of how we communicate. Being a conduit for people to conduct free speech provides us with extensive legal protection against people posting content that causes negative legal consequences. However, with more and more social media platforms heavily moderating and curating content, this classification has come into question. So the real question is, how should a social media platform operate legally?
Content Publisher Or Speech Platform
Social media platforms walk the line between a publisher and a communication platform. Legally, an ISP or a phone line is not responsible for any content or communications that happens through their networks because the users are the only ones generating those communications and are considered communication platforms. However, a news network’s website is a content publisher because the company is responsible for all the content on its website. These two things have very different protections and are liable for different things in the law.
Legal Protections Of A Speech Platform
Under a law known as Section 230, a speech platform, or conduit of speech, is given extensive legal protections that protect the company from the legal ramifications that would come from defamatory, copyright infringing, or other illegal content that was conducted over their platforms. Before Section 230 was created, each company was responsible for everything posted by users and was more liable to face legal troubles. As was mentioned earlier, phone lines and ISPs are the most clearly defined examples. No one blames the phone company for what people say during their calls.
Publishers do not have any of these legal protections, and the government legally holds them responsible for the content they post because they oversee all the information they permit. Currently, social media platforms have the same protections as the phone line or an ISP since their platforms’ content is largely user-generated.
The Effects of Social Media on Users
With platforms such as Twitter or TikTok, which have millions of users, many people may find themselves heavily influenced by content on social media. You will have your news-providing accounts that will have their own biases, which is normal. However, with social media, the possibility of misleading, incorrect, or harmful content is high. In recent years, there have been many controversies with companies like Facebook and TikTok. Some users, politicians, etc., have claimed they can influence the masses by choosing what to show through curating certain content to be seen more than others. They still allow open free speech but may selectively decide what people see on their media, similar to a publisher curating and choosing what to display. This situation has led to more people questioning what social media classifies as legally.
What Should A Social Media Platform Be Considered Legally?
Social media is somewhere in the middle of the two because social media platforms have content coming in extremely fast from anyone who wants to post it. Yet, social media platforms have recently taken to heavy moderation, censorship, and curation of content they allow on the website or show to other users. These actions push social media platforms closer to publisher status as they control more of their content. However, if social media platforms were to lose these legal protections, they would likely have to dramatically increase the level of moderation, which is impractical because of the volume of posts would be held responsible for the actions of the users it was unable to crack down upon. Their classification is up for debate, but right now, platforms that moderate the user content posted on their websites can still be considered speech conduits, so they are likely to stay a speech platform.
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This article was updated on 9/27/24.