The Supreme Court sided with Big Tech in a decision Thursday clearing Google from liability when groups that use a platform the tech giant owns publish extremist content.
In their 9-0 decision, the justices ruled that YouTube, which is owned by Google, was not liable for aiding and abetting international terrorism by allowing the publication of recruiting materials for the militant group ISIS, from which the companies presumably profited.
The decision in the case, Gonzalez v. Google, came the same day as a similar ruling in Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, which stemmed from a lawsuit concerning a Jordanian citizen, Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in an ISIS attack on an Istanbul nightclub in 2017. The Court ruled that Twitter did not aid and abet terrorism when it hosted tweets from ISIS.
While the rulings were victories for their respective companies, the pair of decisions also allowed the Court’s justices to sidestep entering into a long-standing battle over the legal shield for online publishers in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That 1996 regulation puts the liability for dangerous or defamatory content published on the internet on the person who created that content rather than the service that hosted it.
Besides providing a legal shield for the content published on social media platforms, the legal framework established under Section 230 gives those platforms and websites a wide berth to moderate content those sites deem harmful, a tool some tech firms claim is employed in an effort to minimize public harm, prevent the spread of misinformation or avoid lawsuits.
That wide legal berth has gotten those tech firms into trouble.
In recent years, tech firms’ reliance on Section 230 has led to repeated attacks by figures like former President Donald Trump, who regularly waged war against the regulation in response to the platforms’ content moderation policies. In 2020, in response to content moderation practices he and other Republicans felt were unduly biased against conservatives, he signed an executive order seeking to curb how social media sites use Section 230.
During the Trump administration, then-Attorney General William Barr went as far as publishing a list of recommended reforms to Section 230 law in an attempt to rein in what the Department of Justice described as “unclear and inconsistent moderation practices” that limit speech alongside a proliferation of “illicit and harmful content” on the internet.
“The beneficial role Section 230 played in building today’s internet, by enabling innovations and new business models, is undisputed,” Barr wrote at the time. “It is equally undisputed, however, that the internet has drastically changed since 1996.”
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He continued: “Many of today’s online platforms are no longer nascent companies but have become titans of industry. Platforms have also changed how they operate. They no longer function as simple forums for posting third-party content, but use sophisticated algorithms to suggest and promote content and connect users.
“Platforms can use this power for good to promote free speech and the exchange of ideas, or platforms can abuse this power by censoring lawful speech and promoting certain ideas over others,” Barr said.
While lawmakers ultimately did not act on those reforms, the Supreme Court decided Thursday it should not be involved in any future decisions on Section 230’s future.
When considering Gonzalez v. Google, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its opinion last year that Section 230 “shelters more activity than Congress envisioned it would.” That lower court explicitly noted that Congress—rather than the courts—should have the ultimate say over the application of the law.
The Supreme Court, it seems, was of a similar mind on Thursday.
Because “much (if not all) of” the family’s complaint seemed to fail under the court’s prior decision in Twitter v. Taamneh or the Ninth Circuit’s previous decision in the Google case, there was no need for it to weigh in on the scope of Section 230,” the Court said. “We therefore decline to address the application of [Section 230] to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief.”
Newsweek has reached out to Google via email for comment.