The Supreme Court's decision to side with Twitter and Google in two cases that threatened to upend the internet means Big Tech companies can rest easy knowing they still enjoy protections from being sued over content posted to their platforms by users.
The Supreme Court on Thursday released decisions in Taamneh v. Twitter and Gonzalez v. Google, two cases related to claims about terrorist content hosted on social platforms. The court was asked in the two cases to consider whether or not it needed to adjust important internet protections concerning whether a platform's hosting of terrorist content was sufficient to make it liable as an associate. The court ruled narrowly in favor of the Big Tech companies, stating that the plaintiffs failed to make appropriate claims in their efforts to allege culpability. They also sent Gonzalez back to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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"There's a pretty rare bipartisan consensus about what to do on this issue," Tom Romanoff, technology project director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told the Washington Examiner. Romanoff noted that the questions in both cases were similar, which is why they were decided on similar rulings.
Since 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has shielded online platforms from any legal responsibility for content posted by users. Big Tech lobbyists have said that if Section 230 is weakened, platforms from social media to online marketplaces could be open to costly litigation, which in turn would prompt tighter censorship of users.
After Section 230 survived Thursday's highly anticipated rulings, the industry breathed a sigh of relief. "Today's ruling in Gonzalez v. Google underscores the important role Section 230 continues to play in today's internet," TechNet CEO Linda Moore said.
Gonzalez stems from the killing of then-23-year-old Nohemi Gonzalez, who was studying in Paris when she became the only American victim of a terrorist attack that claimed 129 other lives in the city. The Islamic State later took responsibility for the acts. The young woman's family sued Big Tech companies, accusing them of radicalizing terrorists by hosting pro-ISIS content on their
Supporters of the plaintiffs in the case argued that existing court interpretations of Section 230 are too broad. Some liberals have argued that major platforms are failing to live up to their responsibility to curb extremist or violent content. Conservative critics, meanwhile, maintain that Section 230 has given Big Tech companies license to discriminate against conservative speech. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) filed an amicus brief in support of Gonzalez, arguing that the courts have long ignored the difference between publisher liability and distributor liability, or the difference between a newspaper and a bookstore.
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Taamneh arose under similar circumstances. An ISIS-linked attacker killed Nawras Alassaf and 38 other people at a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017. The family of Alassaf sued Twitter, Meta, and Google by alleging the companies helped contribute to the growth of the terrorist network and that they could have taken more forceful actions to combat pro-ISIS content. The court specifically focused on whether the platforms could be held culpable under the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.
Still, Section 230 faces threats in the legislature in the form of bills like Sen. Mark Warner's (D-VA) SAFE TECH Act.