Well, is Verizon allowed to use packet injection to "fact check" a website you view over their internet connection?
Because seems to be presenting themselves as a neutral platform, which they have shown themselves to not be.
EDIT:
Just to clarify, obviously Twitter is not presenting themselves to users as a neutral platform. But for legal purposes, they are cloaking themselves in the same privileged status as a phone company, when they clearly are not.
A) Twitter has never presented itself as a neutral platform. They've banned white supremacists, dangerous conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and even left-leaning people like Destiny when he joked about how he was going to bomb Comcast.
B) Verizon (Comcast, Spectrum, etc...) are closer to something like a utility. I wouldn't be supportive of a water or electricity company not providing services to people I disagree with. Twitter is not a utility, it's a glorified fortune-cookie-sharing site. It's a not a "right", and there's no reason that you should feel entitled to it.
Twitter is _the_ place where political discourse happens not just _a_ place where it happens. It's an unfortunate state of affairs that they happen to be a private company with a bias.
That still doesn't make it _the_ place for political discourse. Reddit gets quoted quite often. Tons of politicians do AMA on Reddit and Facebook. Just because Trump is on Twitter doesn't make it special.
That's not how these kinds of "facts" work. If someone tried to use this during some kind of proceeding the court will determine this. (Using a jury or not, expert witnesses or not, doesn't matter.)
Usually fact checking "services" like snopes.com, politifact, or WaPo with the pinocchio heads, have a consistent model about what they are willing to touch, how they approach it, and how they determine factualness, etc.
Just throwing out that Twitter is or isn't _the_ platform makes no sense.
> Because seems to be presenting themselves as a neutral platform
Eh? Twitter bans accounts _all the time_. It hides stuff from search, and hides potentially explicit content behind an "are you sure you want to see this?" It is in no way a neutral platform. Fact-checking world leaders was originally conceived by twitter as an alternative to just banning them when they get dangerous.
> Eh? Twitter bans accounts _all the time_. It hides stuff from search, and hides potentially explicit content behind an "are you sure you want to see this?"
Right, so why are they trying to claim that they are a neutral platform then, for legal purposes, when they very clearly are not one??
Twitter responds to any lawsuits by claiming that they are a neutral disinterested platform, when they very clearly are not. They enjoy the same legal protections as the phone company, when they obviously are not at all the same!
> Right, so why are they trying to claim that they are a neutral platform then, for legal purposes, when they very clearly are not one??
Where are they claiming that? There's no such requirement under the CDA (if there was, then any website with a stated political or other stance and a comments section would be in serious trouble).
> Twitter responds to any lawsuits by claiming that they are a neutral disinterested platform, when they very clearly are not.
Examples of this?
> They enjoy the same legal protections as the phone company
> But for legal purposes, they are cloaking themselves in the same privileged status as a phone company
Hum I don't think that could possibly be true. What leads you to think this? Phone companies existed before Section 230 and as far as I know their behavior didn't change. Have you read Section 230? It definitely reads like it was passed to give entities like Twitter more power to delete objectionable content and it definitely doesn't read to me like it obligates them to be neutral.
Legally they can probably get away with it, since it has happened with other ISPs. The technical reason this doesn't happen is due to your connection a website being encrypted.
Because seems to be presenting themselves as a neutral platform, which they have shown themselves to not be.
EDIT: Just to clarify, obviously Twitter is not presenting themselves to users as a neutral platform. But for legal purposes, they are cloaking themselves in the same privileged status as a phone company, when they clearly are not.