Twitter, I believe, is publicly owned. It's accountable to its shareholders and has fiduciary duties. Is it wise for a publicly owned company to piss off half its potential users? No.
Under the Communications Decency Act, Twitter has a "safe harbor" from prosecution for the content of its users only insofar as it does not exercise editorial authority over that content. That is, if Twitter is a public platform where users can post anything they want, Twitter will not be blamed for it... unless Twitter starts to decide what can and cannot be posted on its service. The moment they start to make those decisions, Twitter becomes a publisher and thus responsible for everything posted on its service.
In effect, despite being a private entity not itself bound by the First Amendment, Twitter is nonetheless bound by existing regulations.
This entry was published Wed Apr 24 06:47:31 CDT 2019 by TriggerFinger
and last updated 2019-04-03 22:55:43.0.
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