And as far as we know, Will Prowse is not the government.
My point simply was that is major media companies recognize they have liability by allowing people to perpetuate dangerous mistruths, why wouldn't Will be concerned about the same thing? You endanger other peoples' lives and endanger this community.
No, that is wrong.
With the exception for calls to violence or online threats, social media websites are insulated from liability for their users postings. As I said, there are exceptions to this insulation for speech which encourages violence, and for online threats.. the only other exception is for copyrighted materials. Social media websites must remove copyrighted material when they are made aware of it.
Other than that, they are not liable for misinformation, even when that misinformation causes someone harm.
Websites like Facebook, twitter, etc, are free to pick and choose what can and can't be posted, the same way you and I are free to choose what we allow to be said or talked about inside our own homes. Facebook bans misinformation, not because of legal concerns, but because of moral concerns for which there is no law or restrictions.
Facebook has a lot of resources and could potentially be sued in civil court for damages caused by misinformation... and they have money to make such a civil lawsuit worth the effort. How this falls under the protection laws that are set up specifically to protect these websites is something that is beyond my knowledge.
Interestingly, Donald Trump tried to blackmail them with the law. Advocating for his freedom to use Facebook as his own personal misinformation campaign, Trump threatened to get the laws removed that protect these websites from the very thing he was trying to blackmail them with. Irony doesn't quite describe it.. Most of the public had no clue because Trump misstated what the law was and what it did, but the fact is, had he actually been able to get the law rescinded, it would have forced facebook to remove anything fake or misleading, which is what they did for the covid and election related stuff.
In simple terms, Trump basically said "Let me in the door or I'm going to ban myself from entering". Which, as you can imagine, is so utterly ridiculous it can't be put into words..
The law is Section 230 and it basically protects websites from liability due to user content. Without such law in place, everything you posted would have to be pre-approved so these websites could protect themselves from liability. In the absence of 230, this very website would be shut down, either voluntarily, or through a civil lawsuit. All it would take is for one person to hurt themselves based on the advice in some member's post or reply, and that would be the end.
230 is a good thing.. Trump wanted to remove it to further his own agenda of misinformation..