Feed structure and content aside, is writing and applying a custom TOS that covers content not editorializing/publishing?
This is the crux of the argument from the political right at the moment: Twitter is deciding what sort of content is and is not allowed on their platform according to some sort extrajudicial rationale. I don't understand how that isn't publishing.
I'd bet any definition of publishing includes exerting control over which content to display, when to display that content, and where. These companies do all of those things.
> is writing and applying a custom TOS that covers content not editorializing/publishing?
For the specific TOS in question I see no way this counts as that. It is simply banning things like pornography, hate speech, and cyberbullying among other things. How that becomes "editorializing" is crazy to me and doesn't seem like a good faith argument.
> I'd bet any definition of publishing includes exerting control over which content to display, when to display that content, and where. These companies do all of those things.
The exerting here is incredibly minimal at best though. There is also no literal editing of material, affiliated writers, or strong voice selection done by Twitter. At the end of the day, the users decide what they want to see so long as it applies to the TOS. This is wildly different from any publisher such as a news outlet.
If we stretch the definition of publisher to its ends, comically so, we can absolutely get Twitter and Facebook under it. We'd also eliminate any prior meaning of the word.
This is the crux of the argument from the political right at the moment: Twitter is deciding what sort of content is and is not allowed on their platform according to some sort extrajudicial rationale. I don't understand how that isn't publishing.
I'd bet any definition of publishing includes exerting control over which content to display, when to display that content, and where. These companies do all of those things.