Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by roganp 2206 days ago
The owners of printing presses have even more power, but the government does not mandate open access to those machines for dispensing speech. Unfettered access to twitter is not akin to free speech.
2 comments

Twitter is essentially a big public square the results of which end up getting printed by mainstream press. Publishers are also under more legal restrictions than Twitter is.
No, publishers can be as biased as they want, unlike the new requirements here.
Twitter can also go the publisher route and be biased as much as they want.
Newspapers are publishers, and are subject to rules and regulations for being publishers.

Twitter would not be mandate to open up access to everyone. Instead, the proposed legal changes would merely treat them as publishers, if they act like publishers, and therefore twitter would not have liability protections anymore.

So as soon as they make any kind of restriction on the use of their platform they become publishers? That's quite a stretch. That would have the same effect: it would require them to provide unfettered access for anyone, for any purpose.
> That would have the same effect

If they don't like the section 230 laws, that already exist, then they should go lobby Congress to change it or something.

But right now, if you act as a publisher, then you lose certain protections. That's how that law works.