The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Thursday to overhaul legal protections for internet publishers in two cases, raising concerns that the laws governing online platforms could be fundamentally changed.
The two cases mark the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has directly intervened in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from legal liability for content posted by their users.
The judge’s unanimous decision is a major victory for big tech companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook parent Meta, which rely heavily on the protections provided by Section 230. Silicon Valley has long viewed the law as fundamental to the business models of many internet companies, enabling them to let users post freely on their sites without fear of liability, while providing legal protection in the event they step in to moderate.
The debate surrounding Section 230 is politically contentious. Big tech companies have faced a barrage of criticism in Washington, with Republicans claiming they have used the law’s protections to “censor” right-wing voices and Democrats arguing that Section 230 has helped platforms escape responsibility for failing to stop misinformation.
Tech groups warn that downplaying or removing these shields could force them to be more aggressive in removing content, as they would be more vulnerable to legal liability if they allow potentially harmful material to remain on their sites.
Both cases stem from lawsuits brought by families of victims killed in Islamic State attacks. They allege that Google and Twitter aided a terrorist group that used the companies’ platforms to spread its content.
But the court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the companies were at fault. “Defendants are no more reprehensible for merely creating their media platforms than they were for creating email, cell phones or the Internet,” they wrote in the decision in the Twitter case, which was published alongside the related Google case.
“The countless companies, academics, content creators and civil society organizations who joined us in this case will be reassured by this outcome,” Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado said in a statement. Free speech, fight harmful content, and support businesses and creators who benefit from the internet.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter vs Taamneh stems from a deadly Isis attack at an Istanbul nightclub in 2017, with a victim’s relative accusing Twitter, Facebook and Google of deliberately helping the terrorist group by failing to stop its supporters from using its sites to share their content .
In Gonzalez v. Google, relatives of a 23-year-old American student killed in the 2015 Isis attacks in Paris accused Google of violating the law by hosting Isis videos on its YouTube platform and recommending related content to users algorithmically. U.S. anti-terrorism laws. They argue that Section 230 was enacted before algorithms fundamentally changed the way online content was recommended and absorbed.
But the court disagreed that the blame rested on algorithmic systems, a victory for online platforms that have warned that undermining the algorithms could seriously impair their ability to filter and channel content across the internet.
“(D) Defendants’ recommendation algorithms are only part of the infrastructure by which all content on their platforms is filtered,” the judges wrote in their Twitter decision. “Additionally, these algorithms are agnostic to the nature of the content.”
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy