[whammywon]

"So weird how Cruz &c keep making this sound like there's some mandate that these platforms be nuetral"

My understanding is that if these companies wish to use Section 230 to keep themselves from being held liable for what their users post. By censoring users' posts that don't violate the law they are acting as a publisher and not a platform, ergo eliminating Section 230 protections.

To my understanding, Trump didn't authorize the publishing of his tax info, so surely that would count as "hacked" or "illegally obtained", right? From what I've read about Hunter Biden's laptop, the information was legally obtained because he left the computer at the repair shop long enough that it legally became the property of the shop owner. I could be wrong (and if I am, please let me know) but that, to me, seems like clear bias on the part of Twitter and Facebook.

If they had treated both articles in the same manner I would likely agree with you about a lack of bias, but it seems to me that this was done to prevent damage being done to one campaign.

[rektide]

My understanding was that Section 230 was to protect platforms from liability. It was not to create new restrictions on how they must or must not otherwise regulate & shape speech on their platform.

This implication that platforms have to allow anyone to say whatever they want unless it's a certain pre-set class of illegal speech, lest they become some other service class with additional liabilities for speech, seems facetiously misguided & contrary to all evidence there is for how Section 230 was proposed, discussed, and how it describes itself.

[whammywon]

"...seems facetiously misguided & contrary to all evidence"

It may be, I'm certainly no expert. As a layman I've been led to believe that if you alter user-generated content you toe the line of being classified as a publisher as opposed to a platform. And my understanding of platform versus publisher is that the latter is legally liable for the site's content and thus allowed to be moderated more heavily than the former. Again, I have zero experience with writing/interpreting law so recognize that I could be wrong here...