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Friday, May 29, 2020

Can't Win. 

The CEO of Twitter is in a can't-win position, and there is little he can do about it.  On the one hand, he is responding to public pressure to fact-check suspect tweets.  On the other, President Trump is siccing the FCC on him for doing just that.  Fact-checking is what he should be doing, and Trump should not be investigating him, but that makes no difference.  He now has to unleash a phalanx of lawyers and lobbyists to protect Twitter's position in the social media marketplace, and it will be costly.  At issue is whether he should be considered a publisher or a distributor of information.  As a publisher, Twitter is liable for erroneous and libelous communications, which means Twitter would have to go to enormous expense to check every one of thousands of tweets per hour.  As a distributor, he can't be sued for content moderation, but he can be placed under a microscope for actions taken to distribute the facts of an issue.  There is no answer to this except to elect another President who is not so wroth about his opinions, and, of course, victory in the courts.

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