Willie O’Reilly: A long overdue reckoning for the giants of social media

The recent events in Washington DC have seen Facebook and Twitter diving for cover as they try to wash their hands of responsibility. It won’t work

Jack Dorsey, Twitter chief executive, and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, are finally having to face up to the responsibilities other media have always had to deal with

I’m enjoying watching the unfolding drama at Facebook and Twitter as they try to navigate their “editorial standards” in the aftermath of the Washington insurrection. They are grasping for standards they never had.

Way back in the primordial digital soup, both organisations denied they were publishers and laughed at the notion that they needed to filter or edit their user comments. They argued that they were only hosting comments, not publishing them. In their view, ...