


Twitter and Facebook Are Publishers, Not Platforms

Social networks are calling themselves platforms rather than publishers to skirt around legal issues, and it has to stop.

The changing definition of the word platform has been galling me. In the classic sense, and insofar as technology is concerned, a platform is (from the Oxford English Dictionary) "A standard for the hardware of a computer system, which determines what kinds of software it can run."

OpinionsFor various legal and marketing reasons, the word platform has taken on all sorts of other meanings which boil down to "a neutral place we set up but are not responsible for anything that goes on there, but we keep the money." Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all come to mind.

These are not platforms. They are modern publishing mechanisms. For one thing, platforms—your Mac or Windows PC—do not need, nor exist because of, advertising, among other differentiators.

There is some argument that Windows is a platform, but it's just an operating system that runs on a platform called the PC. Is the browser a platform? No, it's software that runs on your operating system to access the internet. But isn't the internet itself a platform, you may ask? No, the internet is a highly structured and refined network, not a platform.

Well, what about the iPhone? It's a platform, isn't it? Yes, it is.

At the bottom of the barrel of this debate are Facebook, Twitter, and other social network software systems. As versatile as they may or may not be, they are not platforms. They want to be seen as platforms for the sole purpose of avoiding legal constraint, which costs money to work around and requires more responsibility than these companies want to be burdened with.

They are publishers. It is time we stopped giving them a free ride as bogus "platforms" as if they have no control and cannot be held responsible for what their users post. Every so often, Facebook or Twitter banishes someone or removes some pages or tweets, and we see them doing their job of editing the work to be published so it meets community and legal standards. Just like a newspaper, magazine, or any publisher is supposed to do.

Yes, the Wild West aspect of these social networking systems has been fun. Posters/users have been able to get away with doing whatever they want on someone else's dime. Great fun.

On my PC—an actual platform—I can do whatever I want with zero constraints. That's because a true platform is genuinely a neutral device or thing. I own it. I can do whatever I want with it. I can take Windows off and run Linux or write my own code.

There is no such relationship with Facebook. It's not owned by me. I'm a guest allowed to run its software via a browser or other go-between. On a platform, I have the right to do anything I want. None of this is true for these online-software cloud-based structures. It's folly to think otherwise.

These social systems would be out of business overnight if they were redefined as publishers. Seen as platforms, they are given a free pass on too many legal issues, including libel. When someone goes on Facebook and libels someone in any real way, the company should be sued, as it enabled, published, and allowed the libel to be online.

If Facebook were actually a neutral operation with zero responsibility for anything its users post, like some sort of cork board in a public square, then it would have to allow anything and would never take any sort of action.

As far as I can see, the end user license agreement and terms of service are a smokescreen obfuscating reality. Can a newspaper somehow develop an EULA and post it in the paper holding it blameless from libel or other legal action? If not, then how can Facebook do it? Is it just because it is electronic? Are there special rights for that? You may want to think so, as we've been brainwashed to believe that the internet must be free from constraint. But that is nonsense. There is nothing special about it, except its technical nature. How and why is it exempt from normal laws and standards?

Let's get over these artificial notions about the magical aspects of the internet and the idea that it is somehow exempt from any rules or laws that came before. That goes double for the publishers, aka the social networks.

About John C. Dvorak