Wise Monkeys

“Wise Monkeys” – a cartoon that illustrates why social media platforms need to start taking more responsibility for the content on their services.

Facebook claims that it is a platform, and therefore governed by the ‘common carrier’ rules (and not a publisher like the New York Times). This is a stretch.

The intent of the common carrier provision was designed to govern the transports of things for people: coal in railcars, voices over telephone lines, bits over TCP/IP networks.

Supreme Court Justice Thomas has already started to chip away at this with his ruling on the First Amendment ruling against Twitter’s ban on ex-President Trump.