The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to tech platforms on Thursday by avoiding a ruling on a law that protects them from being held legally responsible for user-created content.
The decisions involved two cases — Twitter v. Taameneh and Gonzalez v. Google — that argued that social media platforms should be held liable for aiding separate terrorist attacks. One of the decisions sidestepped the court's invitation to narrow Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which remains unchanged for now.
- The cases involved claims related to separate ISIS attacks. In Gonzalez, Google's YouTube was blamed for the attack for aiding terrorism by sharing ISIS content. In Taamneh, plaintiffs argued Twitter and others supported terrorists by hosting user-created content.
- In Thursday's Gonzalez opinion, the Supreme Court didn't address Section 230 liability and instead sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for review.
- In the Taameneh ruling, the court unanimously determined that a different law allowing lawsuits for assisting terrorists generally does not apply to tech platforms.
- Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the opinion in the Twitter case, compared social media platforms to other digital technologies, stating they cannot be held responsible for specific terrorist attacks resulting from general terrorist speech.
- The court's decisions avoided addressing the broader implications of Section 230, which shields social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from legal responsibility when they display, suggest, or promote user-generated content.
- Meanwhile, President Biden and some Republican critics agree on the need for potential Section 230 reform, albeit for different reasons.