A Landmark Law is Defended by Big Tech in the US Supreme Court

Tech companies have been protected from lawsuits relating to the content they post on their platforms by a law passed by the US Supreme Court in 1996.

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It is expected that the nine justices will reach a decision on the Internet's future by June 30, in a case related to the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

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Relatives of an attack victim in the French capital, Nohemi Gonzalez, filed a complaint against Google in connection with this case.

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Attackers from the Islamic State group killed the US citizen at the Belle Equipe bar while he was studying in France.

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YouTube, owned by Google, is responsible for recommending videos from the jihadist group to users, which contributed to a violent trend.

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In a legal brief, the family said Google supports ISIS by offering ISIS videos to its users, and thus provides material support to the terrorist group.

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Despite Section 230, which was passed in the early days of the Internet and became one of its pillars, the complaint was dismissed by the federal courts.

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A section of the US Constitution states that internet companies cannot be considered publishers and cannot be legally shielded from liability for content they publish.

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Gonzalez argues that the highly complex recommendation systems perfected by big platforms fall outside the scope of Section 230, arguing that the algorithms are to blame for the harm.

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According to the Gonzalez family legal brief, YouTube's computer algorithms selected users for recommendation of ISIS videos.

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Most cases that come to the Supreme Court are declined, but hearing this one indicates that the court is open to modifying the landmark law.

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Even the prospect of Section 230 being tinkered with by the Supreme Court is giving tech companies cold sweats.

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"A central building block of the modern internet" should not be undermined, Google pleaded in the legal filing.

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In a statement, Google said that it used recommendation algorithms to find needles in humanity's largest haystack.

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Facebook owner Meta in its own brief said that suing platforms for algorithmic features would expose it to liability almost all of the time for content uploaded by third parties.

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A US Supreme Court case involving a very similar issue will be heard on Wednesday, but this time the justices will ask if platforms should be subject to anti-terrorism laws.

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Recent backlash against big tech has led several Supreme Court justices to express a willingness to open up Section 230 to new interpretations.

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Several courts have interpreted the law broadly, conferring broad immunity on some of the world's largest corporations, Clarence Thomas observed in 2021.

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was 11 years old when a law enacted in 2003 was passed, and Google didn't exist when it was passed.

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Due to the deep political divide, it appears unlikely that Congress will be able to move the lines as fast as the Supreme Court.

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The Brookings Institution's Tom Wheeler, a senior researcher, said nobody knows exactly how yet. AFP reports that he said it is important to see how the hearing proceeds.