I don’t see how it would ever make sense to hold social media liable for user posted defamation.

Look at the recent Afroman defamation lawsuit and consider how YouTube is supposed to know whether that music video was defamatory or not. It took a court 3 years to reach a conclusion but you want YouTube to make that same call instantly, on millions of posts a day. What you’d get is a world where Afroman’s (non defamatory) speech basically cannot be shared on social media at all.

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ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I think the difference should be whether they are a dumb pipe, or whether they exercise editorial control and/or promote some content over others.

If you are truly a dumb pipe, that just transmits whatever the users post, then you shouldn't be liable for what goes over your wires. Like the phone company.

As soon as you start acting as an editor: amplifying some content and downplaying (or removing) other content, re-ordering it, ranking it, and so on, then you are placing your name on the content and in a sense should share liability around it.

Companies should have to deliberately decide who they are going to be: are they just wires like the phone company, or are they a newspaper's letters-to-the-editor department? They shouldn't be able to act like one, but have the liability of the other.

	▲	elpool2 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That seems unworkable because, well, I just don’t want social media to be dumb pipes. Without sites making editorial decisions every site will be full of porn and animal torture videos. The current status quo seems way better tbh.