ABSTRACT
Holding social media platforms legally accountable for falsehoods their users post runs into constitutional and statutory barriers that have proven impregnable to legal challenge. This chapter will look at the ways in which social media companies have benefited from strategically walking the line between “publisher” status, when the First Amendment protection afforded to publishers is advantageous to them, versus “common carrier” status, which insulates them against liability. This chapter investigates and critiques leading theories of responsibility, including the concept of social media companies as “information fiduciaries” with heightened professional responsibilities to protect the best interests of their users, concluding that no preexisting concept of tort liability is a suitable fit for the way that user-generated information is transmitted in contemporary society, and that any notion of governmentally enforced “information quality policing” portends a proverbial “cure” that could kill the patient as rapidly as the illness.
