The big story This week, Trump’s rhetoric pushed social media platforms to ponder their red lines. Twitter continued to block tweets on the basis of “glorifying violence,” Snapchat dumped Trump from its Discover feed, and some Facebook employees staged a walkout over Zuckerberg’s handling of the Trump protest. Add some sustained pushback against The New York Times over an editorial prompting military intervention and this week was all about handling voices that stress tested platforms for speech. For the past decade, it’s become increasingly clear that platforms are facing heightened expectations for how they curate user content. What’s most interesting is where this curation hasn’t become an expectation of platforms. eCommerce, for instance, appears to have been largely unaffected by this shift in thinking around platform responsibility. Unless some Nazi paraphernalia sneaks past filters on eBay or Amazon, there’s still shockingly little outcry over the actions of third-party sellers on Amazon. This is something that’s led to them selling goods that are counterfeit, damaged or facing recalls. In the coming years, this will likely shift, but it’s unclear what will drive that scenario beyond regulation. The current discussions have led to a lot of tough conversations surrounding free speech on the web, but eventually the protections that have sprung up around content curation will strike other user-sourced platforms, and what a different web that will be. | 
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