Publisher vs. Platform

A publisher is a company that controls what information is produced using its publication. A platform is a vehicle, generally on the Internet, which can be used by the general public and on which information is not filtered or controlled. Online platforms as they currently exist, are granted this protection as a "platform" instead of as "publisher" through CDA 230.

YouTube is infamous for being a publisher masquerading as a platform. It claims to only censor bigotry, nudity/sexuality, violent content, etc., but it also censors conservatives and others who do not conform to political correctness.

The debate over the differences between a publisher and a platform has reached the forefront of political conversation amid Prager University's lawsuit against YouTube, and the "Adpocalypse" instigated on YouTube by now-former Vox Media "journalist" wannabe and beta male Carlos Maza as part of his vendetta against comedian Steven Crowder.

In addition to YouTube, other Big Tech companies are publishers which masquerade as platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Despite the masses of evidence proving the existence of Big Tech censorship of conservatives, conservative Hunter Avallone disbelieves this fact. In contrast, even socialist Democrat Elizabeth Warren has pledged to "break up Big Tech" (though there are doubts as to her sincerity[1][2] and her methods).[3][4]

The discussion regarding the differences between a publisher and a platform again reached the forefront of political conversation when Twitter, as many leftists and Democrats had been advocating for a long time and in truly Orwellian fashion, finally began to censor President Donald Trump's tweets, using snide "fact-checking," citing CNN, MSNBC, and The Washington Post, establishment leftist echo chambers. In response to this, President Trump drafted an Executive Order forcing Big Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to decide whether they are platforms or publishers. The text of the Executive Order can be found here. It states: "When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree,... [t]hey cease functioning as passive bulletin boards [platforms], and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators [publishers]." Not surprisingly, Twitter, Facebook, other liberal social media companies and their supporters have reacted in extremely negative fashion over the Executive Order, with Twitter continuing to openly tamper with Trump's tweets in defiance of the Executive Order by actually hiding visibility of the content of one tweet while hypocritically continuing to allow openly violent leftist tweets to remain intact, while Facebook made unfounded claims that the Executive Order would "restrict speech online", despite the order having the opposite intent.