Here's why Twitter/Facebook/other platforms are publishers. Neither electricity nor phone companies actively curate content, that, is, choose what content will go where and why (like a newspaper, that is, a publisher). Just cause algorithms are involved not really a difference.

Neither do electricity nor phone companies (usually) deliver advertising based on the curation of content and vice versa. Neither do they as companies foster discussion. Etc etc.

In fact, this goes back to a basic confusion. Not even the web is the same as the internet, and social media is certainly not the internet. Neither are apps or platforms. The utility, if there is one, is the internet, the rest is increasingly some equivalent to publishers.

this is before you get to 1 the over-fetishization of content/representations and 2 the out of date characterisation of both media in general and the divisions within it on all sides, based on a media "age" that's now perhaps passing

per McLuhan but also Whitehead, Langer maybe, a lot of media ecology, Lovelace, Deleuze, Hopper, Virilio, Harney, and many many more.

I first joined Facebook in 2007 to report a Facebook group called "Find Dirt on the New Pastor at Northbrook: Because Everyone Has Secrets," which began within about 7-8 months of me arriving.

It has maybe 450+ members, some of which were children of church members (and maybe some on the membership roles).
It contained pictures of me (one altered to add 666 to my necktie) and my family (one implying that I abused my youngest child).

I reported it to FB, after which the administrators dropped off it. So I contacted FB again, saying if they didn't remove it ithey would hear from my attorney about defamation of character. It was soon removed (though I may still have printouts of all group pages).

(Around the same time there was another Facebook group called "Take Back the Northbrook Youth Group," for which the cover pic was a former youth group member brandishing a handgun. Removed much more quickly when his mother learned of it!)

What I'm saying is this:

1. This is (one of several reasons) why I don't tolerate people misrepresenting me, making unwarranted accusations, or making threats...especially when they are "Christians."

2. Not much has changed on Facebook in 15 years.

I’m going to riff on this for a bit about how this works in the real world.

—-Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users' Location Data, Has Been Archived

Law enforcement generally doesn’t use work by hackers i their investigations because 𝒉𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒍. And while it’s permissible for law enforcement to use evidence that was illegally obtained by a private citizen, the government doesn’t like to do it.

The first reason for this is because the government doesn’t want to be perceived as encouraging illegal activity. In fact, if the government goes over the line the court might and has in many cases said the private party was acting on behalf of the government.

If the evidence is thrown out then you risk losing the evidence and everything you leaned from that evidence.

The second reason is that LE doesn’t need somebody else to archive the data during an active investigation. Law enforcement does this all day everyday with the company

It’s called a preservation letter and it requires the company to keep all data it has at that moment for the length of time stated in the letter (usually 90 days).

@AWS hit @parler_app where it really hurts: in their backend.

This thread is to those claiming that this is a violation of the 1st Amendment and platforms shouldn't be taken down.

Free Speech has limits and it definitely ends with thousands of open calls for violence:
1/