Social Media before the U.S. Supreme Court

Can online platforms be held liable for algorithmically recommending harmful third-party content to users? 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases this week that challenge the federal law regulating internet companies. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects web platforms from liability for third-party content in basically the same way that telephone companies are protected. 

The first case, Gonzalez v. Google, argued February 21, was brought by the family of a young woman who was killed in the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. Her family claims social media companies aided and abetted terrorism by recommending ISIS videos to those who might be interested in order to get more viewers and increase ad revenue. The second, Twitter v. Taamneh, argued February 22, was filed by the family of Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian citizen who was killed in the January 2017 ISIS attack at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul. His family contends that Twitter and the other tech companies knew that their platforms played an important role in ISIS’s terrorism efforts but, despite extensive press coverage and government pressure, did not act aggressively to keep ISIS content off those platforms.

NPR's Nina Totenberg presents the legal questions here. 6 min. 55 sec.  transcript available.