What most people don’t understand is that Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter don’t have the right you and I and most corporations have to take sides in the political debate – at least not in the work they do online. They gave that right away when they accepted immunization from legal liability, under the Communications Decency Act, from activities conducted on their platforms. For instance, they can’t be sued or prosecuted for defamation, libel, or indeed for any criminal activity that takes place in their online domains. They got those privileges by agreeing to serve as mere “carriers” of data – in other words, as utilities, like the old phone company. Therefore they can’t be held responsible for conversations, postings, or other online materials that involve illegal or otherwise dubious actors.
However, they also accepted another responsibility in order to qualify for that special protected status.
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