Abstract:

Social media companies have been claiming to be both an open platform and a publisher in order to justify their decisions with regard to user’s and terrorist organizations’ content. They have done little to curb the spread of terrorist content while at the same time increasingly censoring individuals over their expressed opinions. Being an open platform means that there should be little moderation and censorship over the content posted; however, this has not been seen. Increasingly of late, there has been the removal of content that is trivial when compared to the violence-espousing posts that terrorist organizations, like ISIS, have been able to keep on social media. They have taken on the roles of a publisher and yet think that they can still retain the protections that being an open platform provides. One could argue that these protections that have helped them in numerous lawsuits can no longer be applied to them because they are no longer a place of free thought and speech but are indeed publishers of information.