The Supreme court has ruled against reexamining Section 230

Twitter Aided and Abetted Terrorism, Google vs. ISIS: A Supreme Court Decision Against Social Media

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with Twitter in a case brought by plaintiffs who said the social media company aided and abetted terrorism. Based on its opinion, it sent a related case involving Google back to the lower courts.

Civil liberties activists were happy with the decision. The Electronic Frontier Foundation civil liberties director said they were pleased the court didn’t address or weaken Section 230, which was an essential part of the modern internet. They are pleased that the court found that an online service can’t be held liable for terrorist attacks because they are used by millions of organizations around the globe.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that it could be that bad actors like ISIS can use platforms like defendants’ for illegal ends. “But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.

“Yet, we generally do not think that internet or cell service providers incur culpability merely for providing their services to the public writ large. Nor do we think that such providers would normally be described as aiding and abetting, for example, illegal drug deals brokered over cell phones — even if the provider’s conference-call or video-call features made the sale easier.”

The lawsuit says that defendants recommend their own products, and that they constitute active, substantial assistance. We don’t agree. By plaintiffs’ own telling, their claim is based on defendants’ ‘provision of the infrastructure which provides material support to ISIS.’ The recommendations of the defendants are simply part of the infrastructure. All the content on their platform is sorted by information and inputs provided by users and found in the content itself. Any content that includes the phrase “Islamic State” is matched with any user who is least likely to view it, based on the nature of the content. The fact that these algorithm matched some content with others does not make defendants help become active abetting. At the time the platform was up and running, most defendants stood back and didn’t take any further action with respect to the terrorist group.

For Gonzalez v. Google, “the allegations underlying their secondary-liability claims are materially identical to those at issue in Twitter,” says the court. “Since we hold that the complaint in that case fails to state a claim for aiding and abetting … It seems like the complaint here also fails to state a claim. Because of that, we decline to address the application of 230 to a complaint that seems to only make up a vague claim for relief.

The Gonzalez ruling is short and declines to deal with many of the specifics of the case. But the Twitter ruling does take on a key question from Gonzalez: whether recommendation algorithms constitute actively encouraging certain types of content. Thomas appears skeptical:

Supreme Court justices have indicated for some time that they wish to reexamine the liability of online platforms. But in a set of oral arguments earlier this year, justices seemed reluctant to change Section 230, questioning whether it would upend core pieces of online communication. Today’s rulings likely won’t be the final say on the legal status of internet services, though — the court has previously indicated interest in pursuing a pair of cases covering laws banning internet moderation in Texas and Florida.