Dos this prove Twitter and Facebook are ’publishers’, not ‘platforms’? Neither. You might as well ask if radio is a book or a newspaper. It’s neither - it’s radio. Facebook and Twitter are neither - they’re social networks.

Even ‘Platform’ doesn’t work here - Apple clearly plays a different role to twitter & FB, as does Amazon.

The internet is a new sphere, that touches some of the same free speech questions as book, radio, newspaper, telephones, and a public square. But those all have different answers, and so does this - you can’t just define away the questions.

These systems have at least as much in common with a phone network as a newspaper. Two billion people post a hundred billion times a day. That’s not a newspaper. But FB can filter that. That’s not a telephone. It’s something new.

Last month the EU panicked when it realised the privacy laws it had ready passed were about to ban internet companies from running automated scans for child porn. This stuff does not face the same issues as Faber & Faber.

The single dumbest point in this argument was Sasha Baron Cohen claiming Facebook should run by the same rules as his local restaurant. It's not a fucking restaurant, Sasha - it's a communications tool used by 2bn people.

SMS peaked at 20-25bn messages a day, globally. Facebook is at 100bn. That's not a book. It's also not a telco. It's something else.