Please help me understand: why shouldn't online sites be held accountable

[TuskMoar]

57. That is Not at All What I Said

Read my post. I am in favor of holding posters accountable for their posts. I am not in favor of holding the forums accountable. Equating social media to newspaper and broadcast media is inaccurate and misleading. I am posting on DU right now and you and I are having a debate in nearly real time. If my post or your post (or anyone else's) has to be cleared by a legal team prior to posting, our debate is not possible to have.

Although I stipulate that there is a problem to the spread of disinformation and I am open to policies that will inhibit the spread if disinformation, I will not be supportive of your proposed solution to hold social media websites or apps (DU, KOS, Twitter, FB, etc.) liable for the posts that are made on those platforms. Mark Zuckerberg is a weird dude about whom I have a high degree of skepticism, but he does not believe in Jewish Space Lasers and he should not be accountable for MTG's posting on FB. I am fully in favor of holding MTG to account for her posts on FB, but not FB or Mark Zuckerberg.

I guess I just don't get why the equating print and broadcast media is the same as internet forums. They are very clearly different. I also don't get why holding people who make and distribute the information accountable instead of the platforms is not enough. It can be done and it is not that hard to do.

Social media is a new superpower that can and is used for both good and evil. I am not yet ready to give up the good to quash the evil. Without social media, would be have known about the key role Stacy Abrams played in Georgia? I don't think I would have know about it. Because of social media, I had the opportunity to donate to the GA senate races. I don't live in GA. Those senate races were nationalized and won because of social media. And, this is only a single of many examples of the benefits of social media. Your proposal would require ever single post to be cleared by a legal team prior to being made public.

If your proposal were to be put into effect, I could not even complain about my Tesla (I don't own one). But, do you know how litigious Elon Musk is about negative Tesla reviews? Many professional car reviewers won't even review it because of his history of lawsuits against negative reviews unless they have a well funded legal department. DU, Kos, FB, and Twitter would die if everything had to be vetted prior to being made public.