That is the question.
Today’s large scale Internet services — companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter — insist they are “platforms.” Perhaps it’s ironic that their insistence comes just when they face heightened scrutiny for their role in enabling third parties to inflict damage on others via their “platforms.” While old media like the New York Times remain publishers, responsible for what appears in their pages, the platforms are sticking to the story that they’re just “common carriers,” like the phone companies.
For the platforms, unfiltered user-generated content is a requirement for scale. If they had to approve every post — well — that would slow things down. And yes there would have to be editorial approval, which might look arbitrary, but goes with the territory. And some “letters to the editor” might not make it into print, even after editing for ad hominem attacks, factual correctness, brevity, proper respect for disclosure laws, and other flaws. The fluff and vitriol would dry up in a hurry, if ready platforms weren’t just sitting there, begging for more user-generated content day and night.
A publisher should be defined by what people see rather than by the mechanics of the underlying content distribution machine. Inevitably, even on the platforms, content is somewhat curated by people, despite algorithms’ doing a lot of screening…
