Trump says that Twitter can't be a publisher and still have platform protection

Internet services like the phone company are immune to lawsuits about what others put on them because they don't control their content.

Even insane trial lawyers haven't tried, to my knowledge, to sue phone companies for what people say when using their services.

The original idea was to provide the same protection to internet services.  For example an ISP can't be sued because a website it hosts posts slander or libel. The website owners can be sued but the ISP that hosts the site can't.

Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc all benefit from this immunity.

However they've abused it and now President Trump is ordering the FCC to take action to stop the abuse.

Under the law platforms are protected from lawsuits but publishers aren't.

That's because a platform doesn't pick and choose what is and isn't allowed on its sites other than to ban criminal activity.  Platforms are like the phone company; content neutral.

But a publisher controls what's on its sites.  Publishers are like the WaPo or NBC, they control their content and hence they are responsible for it.

Twitter and the other social sites have been censoring speech that's perfectly legal that they don't like which means that they have stopped being content neutral platforms, like the phone company or an ISP, and have become publishers, like the Washington Post.

They're using their power to discriminate against viewpoints they don't like.  For example Twitter has banned various conservatives but has allowed two accounts that called for the death of a teenage boy they didn't like to remain.

They fact check Trump but not Adam Schiff.

As some conservatives have pointed out because Twitter is a private business they can discriminate in that way just as the Washington Post can.

However were the WaPo to publish a letter to the editor that made baseless charges against a private citizen, as opposed to a public figure, they can be sued. As a result the ensure that such content doesn't show up.

What Trump is doing is telling Twitter that they can in fact put their finger on the scales and discriminate against conservative thought and what they call "hate" speech. But if they choose to be a publisher rather than a platform they can't have legal immunity for what they publish just like all other publishers.

This will allow the entire community of legal sharks to sue Twitter to their hearts content.

Some left wing nutter says that a moderate Republican is a Nazi who hates Jews when in fact the guy is nothing of the sort; lawsuit.

Twitter publishes a "fact check" which is factually incorrect and which libels a person; lawsuit.

Twitter shadowbans people supporting one party and not the other; lawsuit about campaign contributions.

Twitter fact checks only Republicans; lawsuit about campaign contributions.

It's 100% true that as a private company Twitter can be as biased and unfair as it wants to be.

But now it will no longer be protected from the legal consequences of its actions.

The Board of Directors of Twitter will have to decide just how much money they want to lose to lawsuits in order to keep helping the Democrat party.

This solution doesn't give the government any control over online content and hence the claims by some that any attempt to force Twitter to be content neutral would require the government to have the power to control online speech.