>Social media websites do not fall under any kind of "publisher" obligation
No one said they did. But also Section 230 does not imply that they're exempt of that, in the case they become such a thing. And remember that those rights/obligations are acquired the moment they are exercised.
Consider the following:
Twitter (the platform), on its official twitter account (on their own platform) decides to publish something which has legal repercussions. Are they exempt of them because of that statement on Section 230? No, not at all.
To use a different example, somebody today used the New York Times web site: Section 230 gives them immunity for anything posted by randos in the comments to their articles, where they operate as a platform.
Section 230 does NOT give the NYT immunity for anything in the articles themselves, where they operate as a publisher. However, absent S. 230 protection, those articles and their publisher still enjoy regular First Amendment protection, which is quite strong. In particular, there are nearly insurmountable obstacles for a public figure to win a defamation lawsuit in the US.
Yes, and section 230 explicitly states that moderation does not waive that immunity:
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected [...]
> Twitter (the platform), on its official twitter account (on their own platform) decides to publish something which has legal repercussions. Are they exempt of them because of that statement on Section 230? No, not at all.
No, not at all, because Section 230 has nothing to say about the scenario you are describing.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information _provided by another information content provider_
In your scenario Twitter is the provider of the information, so naturally they are liable for the legal repercussions of posting that information. Everyone already understands how this works intuitively, obviously when something illegal or otherwise legally significant is posted to the internet there isn't even a question of whether or not the posting platform is legally responsible for it as long as they are perceived to be taking reasonable steps to remove the offending content. If the site operators are posting the questionable content directly then obviously they are liable.
That's not what we're talking about though, we're discussing twitter having labled Trump's tweet as misinformation. I guess you're suggesting that twitter is the "publisher" of that warning and thus they are legally responsible for it, which is true, but there is nothing illegal about what they published so the hypothetical is moot.
> Section 230 will not exempt them from what they do.
I'm glad we came to an understanding but this is a strawman. You might as well be saying "Section 230 does not exempt twitter from the law". This is very obviously not something anyone is arguing.
Social media platforms should be considered publications. A company cannot say they have an open platform and call Themselves immune if they’re going to editorialize and punish views you disagree with. Section 230 needs to destroyed.
Destroyed is too strong; it would basically terminate all social media sites, news aggregators, comment sections, forums.. everything since precisely nobody is going to sign up for the legal liability. (Except, maybe, for megacorps like Facebook, with a net gain of nothing)
I would like to see it greatly narrowed.
Even if we ignore this particular instance as a special case where the act was justified, large companies having unfettered control over most political discourse in the country, and wielding that power in an arbitrary, unaccountable way is still a problem.
The leap you're making here is that by moderating things on their platform, they suddenly become the publisher of said information. This is neither in the text of the law, nor in how the courts have interpreted it.
Yes, if Twitter publishes something defamatory in their own name, they're liable. No, they are not the publisher of any content they choose to moderate.
No one said they did. But also Section 230 does not imply that they're exempt of that, in the case they become such a thing. And remember that those rights/obligations are acquired the moment they are exercised.
Consider the following:
Twitter (the platform), on its official twitter account (on their own platform) decides to publish something which has legal repercussions. Are they exempt of them because of that statement on Section 230? No, not at all.