[ericst]

Independent of section 240 or other laws, I would argue that search engine operators are content publishers as soon as we don't know how they choose the order of the results. Same for social media feeds.

Curating is a form of publishing, and following an algorithm is not curating per se, but, if that algorithm is non-transparent, and unknown to the user, it is the same end result...

[__loam]

I agree that systems that are virtually public utilities at this point should be operated more transparently. Google can put whole swaths of legitimate businesses out of business with minor tweaks of the algorithm. We complain about SEO but how do we know Google is optimized for search quality vs their own financial gain?