The Supreme Court handed Silicon Valley a massive victory on Thursday as it protected online platforms from two lawsuits that legal experts had warned could have upended the internet.
The twin decisions preserve social media companies’ ability to avoid lawsuits stemming from terrorist-related content – and are a defeat for tech industry critics who say platforms are unaccountable.
In so doing, the court sided with tech industry and digital rights groups who had claimed exposing tech platforms to more liability could break the basic functions of many websites, and potentially even create legal risk for individual internet users.
In one of the two cases, Twitter v. Taamneh, the Supreme Court ruled Twitter will not have to face accusations it aided and abetted terrorism when it hosted tweets created by the terror group ISIS.
The court also dismissed Gonzalez v. Google, another closely watched case about social media content moderation – sidestepping an invitation to narrow a key federal liability shield for websites, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Thursday’s decision leaves a lower court ruling in place that protected social media platforms from a broad range of content moderation lawsuits.
www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/politics/supreme-court-twitter-google-social-media/index.html
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday sent a letter to congressional leaders advocating for changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law passed about 25 years ago that prevents tech companies from being sued for user content posted on their platforms.
As Internet companies have become larger and more powerful — and more central to American political discourse and news distribution — accusations of bias, anti-trust worries and more have led lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to reconsider the merits of protections for such companies. The DOJ, in a letter obtained by Fox News that was addressed to several congressional leaders Tuesday, said it favors changing Section 230 as it cited the controversy around the New York Post’s stories on Hunter Biden, and a recent Supreme Court opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas.