The internet isn't exempted. You're just looking at the wrong party for liability. The people who actually put up those live streams are liable, and abusing facebook's service.
Same as TV and newspapers; you don't sue Comcast or the guy who installed your satellite dish, you sue the TV station; You don't sue the paper boy, you sue the news paper.
>The people who actually put up those live streams are liable
Yet we insist on allowing anonymity on the net.
Either you know exactly who is doing what and can then make them liable for any consequences that follow from their actions OR you allow anonymity and live with the consequences of that decision as dark as these may be.
One of the primary reasons anonymity is important, is to enable critics of oppressive regimes to voice their opinion.
However, enabling complete anonymity everywhere might not be necessary for that; if you can get someone else, in a different country, to take responsibility for it, that might work too. That's similar to how journalists keep their sources secret, or how wikileaks works.
Stuff that's important will still get published as long as you can get someone else to recognise its importance. But who's going to take responsibility to publish your child porn or snuff movie in their own name?
Facebook, Youtube or whichever platform is the broadcaster in this instance.
If they're not, why do we sue the TV station rather than the production company of the programme? CBS can yell "don't look at us, we didn't make Game of Thrones".
It's their exception that is looking increasingly absurd.
We don't sue the company who owns the radio tower if it's terrestrial TV, or the hosting company if it's on-demand, or the bandwidth provider if it's cable. The important bit is who makes the decision to broadcast something; in the case of a TV show it's CBS, and in the case of a live stream on Facebook that's the user.
I think a potential solution would be to delay livestreams by 20 minutes for anyone who isn't doesn't have a direct and established connection (eg following for more than 24 hours) to the broadcaster to give platforms time to censor the worst stuff. Obviously this would make platforms responsible for effective and fast moderation though...
"in the case of a live stream on Facebook that's the user"
You need to argue that rather than just state it. I can see arguments for and against the proposition, but the facts that Facebook attaches advertising, sometimes removes content, carefully tunes their platform to maximise "engagement", and the user has no direct relationship with the receivers of the live stream, do rather suggest that Facebook is the publisher and the role of the user is more like that of someone who writes a letter to the editor that gets published in a newspaper - except, of course, that Facebook is publishing nearly everything, but I don't see that that's a fundamental difference.
Isn't this letting Facebook and Comcast have their cake and eat it, too? Giving them full authority to censor whatever they want, but still not holding them liable for what they host?
(c) (1) No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Same as TV and newspapers; you don't sue Comcast or the guy who installed your satellite dish, you sue the TV station; You don't sue the paper boy, you sue the news paper.