"They're already a publisher." Actually, they're a media company. They want you think they're a publisher so they can skirt the laws as long as they can. Media

"They're already a publisher." Actually, they're a media company. They want you think they're a publisher so they can skirt the laws as long as they can. Media companies are regulated. Facebook crafts thousands of tiny narratives using their many millions of users as the writers/editors/publishers through posted links, status updates, and media such as live video and photos. Currently, those narratives are algorithmically determined using advertisers and eventually those narratives will trend towards Facebook's nebulous definition of being deemed culturally acceptable, non-threatening, and, most important, the age-old advertiser friendly. It's a slightly democratically-controlled but primarily advertiser-driven narrative creation machine with each narrative crafted by algorithms that are guided by a set of heuristics augmented after each public incident. It's the same as TV, but because 100's of millions of people/advertisers are involved it still looks like it's something else entirely. But it's not, it's just another media company.