Supreme Court to hear challenge to law that shields internet companies from lawsuits
sweeping legal immunity that shields internet companies from lawsuits over user-generated content, a case with potentially enormous consequences for social media.
A provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act known as Section 230 was intended to protect free expression on the internet by shielding internet companies from liability for much of the content their users post on their platforms. The law also protects the companies from lawsuits for removing content that violates their policies.
But the law has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans amid questions about whether social media companies have become too powerful.
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Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, was killed in an ISIS attack in Paris in 2015. Her family sued Google, alleging it was partly responsible because it promoted videos and other content from ISIS that propagated the group’s message. The question in the case is whether Google is entitled to Section 230 protections when it recommends content to other users, even when that process is handled by an algorithm.
Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t say Section 230 is unconstitutional
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The case, Gonzalez v. Google, appeared designed to catch the attention of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who has questioned Section 230 in other contexts.
The Supreme Court dismissed as moot a high-profile case last year about whether former President Donald Trump was on solid legal ground when he blocked several of his critics on Twitter back when he was in office. But Thomas, in a concurrence, lamented the power of social media companies and indicated that they might be treated differently under the law.
“Much like with a communications utility, this concentration gives some digital platforms enormous control over speech,” Thomas wrote. “When a user does not already know exactly where to find something on the Internet – and users rarely do – Google is the gatekeeper between that user and the speech of others 90% of the time.”
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Contributing: Jessica Guynn