Silicon Valley won big in the nation’s highest court.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court protected online platforms from two lawsuits which legal experts had been expressing concern over. Those two cases, in no uncertain terms, could have changed the internet as we know it.
In, Twitter v. Taamneh, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Twitter will not have to face accusations it aided and abetted terrorism when it hosted tweets from ISIS. The opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who said that social media platforms are little different from other digital technologies.
“It might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal – and sometimes terrible – ends,” Thomas wrote. “But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.”
Thomas’ opinion reflected the court’s difficulty in pinning down what kinds of speech ought to trigger liability for social media, and which ought not to.
The court also outright dismissed Gonzalez v. Google. That case involved Google’s YouTube platform; the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American college student who was among the 129 people killed in Paris by ISIS terrorists in November 2015 family alleged the tech giant aided and abetted ISIS in violation of a federal anti-terrorism statute by recommending videos posted by the terror group to users. In the Court dismissing the claims of the family, they sidestepped 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 wide array of content moderation lawsuits.
The twin decisions preserve social media companies’ ability to avoid lawsuits stemming from terrorist-related content. It is a crushing blow for those seeking to hold these platforms accountable for hosting such content.
For a while, many legal experts had viewed the Twitter and Google cases as signs the court might seek sweeping changes–or even the gutting– of Section 230, a law that has faced bipartisan criticism.
As oral arguments unfolded, the likelihood of massive changes to the law seemed to recede.
“I think it slowly started to creep into the realm of possibility that … maybe the Court has no idea what the hell these cases are about and had MAYBE picked them to be activist, but weren’t ready to be THIS activist,” Klonick tweeted.
The justices may soon have another opportunity to weigh in on social media. There are a number of cases dealing with the constitutionality of state laws passed by Texas and Florida that restrict online platforms’ ability to moderate content that could come their way. But the court’s handling of the Twitter and Google cases suggests the court may approach any new cases with some skepticism.
