[juniper_strong]

Here's an article by Eugene Volokh on the difference between publishers, distributors and platforms: https://reason.com/2020/05/28/47-u-s-c-%C2%A7-230-and-the-pu....

"Historically, American law has divided operators of communications systems into three categories", he says, and he describes the third category as:

"Platforms, such as telephone companies, cities on whose sidewalks people might demonstrate, or broadcasters running candidate ads that they are required to carry."

His description of the liability rules for platforms:

"Platforms weren't liable at all. For instance, even if a phone company learned that an answering machine had a libelous outgoing message (see Anderson v. N.Y. Telephone Co. (N.Y. 1974)), and did nothing to cancel the owner's phone service, it couldn't be sued for libel. Likewise, a city couldn't be liable for defamatory material on signs that someone carried on city sidewalks (even though a bar could be liable once it learned of libelous material on its walls), and a broadcaster couldn't be liable for defamatory material in a candidate ad."

If you see a difference between that and "common carrier" that is relevant to whether an entity considered a traditional platform would have to carry spam or porn, what is it?