Platforms or media companies? FB, Twitter actions spark debate

LIKE MEDIA FIRMS, SOCIAL MEDIA COS RELY ON CONTENT, WHICH IS ALSO THEIR MAIN REVENUE SOURCE

NEW DELHI: Twitter’s decision to take down several posts in relation to the farm protests and its criticism has brought the spotlight back on a crucial debate relating to how social media companies are classified: they claim to be technology platforms, but how they moderate– and even curate by way of algorithmic prioritisation – their content is similar to editorial decisions exercised by media companies.

On Thursday for instance, the social media company took down tweets of Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut who called for “eradication” of some people. Earlier this week, Twitter temporarily blocked some accounts in India before unblocking them on the grounds that it believes in “protecting public conversation and transparency”, according to an official.

The classification of social media companies is crucial because they are at present beyond the regulatory scope that extends to media companies, requiring the latter to follow specific guidelines on speech and expression.

Not only do they decide who gets to post what, they also regulate which content is amplified and which isn’t.

The companies — Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and others — base their characterisation as technology platforms on two main pillars:

That the content they host is not generated by them, and that code – not human intervention – determines how it is displayed. At the core of this is Section 230 of Communications Decency Act in the US, which lays down that internet companies will not be held liable for the content they host.

In a 2017 paper in First Monday, a peer-reviewed open access journal for research on the internet, public and tech policy experts Philip Napoli and Robyn Caplan write that treating social media companies as tech firms ignores the social aspects and influence of their reach, as also the fact that their main revenue source is content, the same as media companies.