Supreme Court Takes On Google Case With Powerful Internet Shield Law

Invoking the "Magna Carta of the Internet," the company claims it is immune from responsibility for the 2015 Paris terrorist assault.

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Google comes first, then the US This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in defense of something that is widely considered as a bedrock of the online economy and is also held responsible for the spread of dangerous content.

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The relevant law, Section 230, exempts virtually all third-party content housed on internet platforms from legal liability. The major internet companies' business models might be completely upended by a decision to reduce that protection, especially those of social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Google's YouTube that primarily rely on recommendation algorithms.

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At a panel discussion about the case held by the Brookings Institution last week, Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor from the University of Minnesota, referred to Section 230 as "the Magna Carta of the internet" and warned that it would "create a massive disturbance" if it didn't maintain the status quo.

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Congress is overwhelmingly in favor of amending Section 230, but legislative efforts to do so have stagnated because of party disputes on the problem and the solution.

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Both parties' lawmakers are concerned that the immunity law has contributed to the propagation of hazardous information to children and other vulnerable populations. Conservatives claim that the immunity has allowed liberal-leaning digital corporations to exclude conservative ideas, while Democrats claim that it has allowed businesses to overlook misleading and hazardous material that is spreading online.

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This has given the Supreme Court the opportunity to possibly change a key piece of internet law. The family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American college student who was among the more than 100 victims of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, filed the lawsuit, Gonzalez v. Google.

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According to the plaintiffs, YouTube failed to remove some ISIS terrorist videos and even encouraged people to view them. Despite the fact that they haven't shown any proof that the terrorists involved saw those films, they assert that Google is now liable for damages under the Anti-Terrorism Act. In essence, the plaintiffs and their supporters contend that platforms' algorithmic suggestions of dangerous content shouldn't be covered by Section 230 protection.

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Google, a division of Alphabet Inc., claimed that it is protected by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act in order to win in lower courts. The law is frequently referred to as a shield since it shields platforms from being sued for hosting objectionable user posts—a move that is credited with paving the path for the financial success of internet platforms.

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Platforms are also protected by Section 230 from legal action for removing problematic content. At the time, lawmakers believed that doing this would persuade internet providers to obstruct objectionable material like sexual photos of children, but critics claim that tech corporations have instead used it to restrict conservative ideas.

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The case, according to groups that support the plaintiffs, is a long-overdue opportunity to correct a fundamental legal imbalance that has given online platforms an unhealthily excessive amount of power and influence. These groups include some child safety advocates and conservative free speech supporters.

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They claim that the 1996 immunity shield for online platforms is largely to blame for the internet environment becoming a breeding ground for a variety of social diseases, from hate speech to eating disorders.

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Several of the plaintiffs' supporters highlighted the potential harms done to children online by algorithmic recommendation systems that seek to maximize young users' involvement in friend-of-the-court papers. 

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At a recent Brookings panel, Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, stated, "We've all woken up 20 years later and the internet's not fantastic. And perhaps it's time to consider how to make the internet a more civilized environment.

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Yet, the possibility that the high court would weaken Section 230 has sparked a wave of anxiety among the online community.

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A number of businesses and individuals have submitted friend-of-the-court filings in Google's favor, including Meta Platforms Inc., the proprietor of Facebook and Instagram, and NetChoice, a trade association that includes TikTok, which is controlled by China's ByteDance Ltd.

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In agreement with Google, Microsoft Corp. asserted that platforms "inevitably will have to drastically cut down on the information they allow on their services—even content they have no reason to believe violates any laws."

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Together with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Progressive Policy Institute, several conservative pro-business organizations have taken Google's side in this debate.

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According to Jeff Kosseff, author of "The Twenty Six Words That Created the Internet," a book about the Section 230 immunity law, limiting Section 230 would stifle the internet's creative ferment by making platforms wary about recommending personalized content—the technology that has made platforms like TikTok and Instagram so popular. 

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The sponsors of Section 230, Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Oregon) and former Rep. Christopher Cox, also submitted a brief in support of it (R., Calif.).

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The two argued that if Google were to lose, "platforms would be held accountable for all of their decisions to offer or not present specific third-party content—exactly the conduct that Congress sought to protect."

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The Biden administration, however, contends that broad interpretations of the federal immunity law threaten to undercut other legal protections, which is a worrying trend for internet companies.

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The enforcement of other significant federal statutes by both private plaintiffs and federal agencies would be compromised by a too liberal interpretation of [the immunity law], according to the U.S. A friend-of-the-court brief was submitted by the solicitor general. 

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The lawsuit will be heard, the Supreme Court decided last October. Although Justice Clarence Thomas had previously intimated in court declarations and opinions that the federal courts' present reading of Section 230 might be overly wide, many legal academics think that he most certainly spearheaded the effort to reconsider the Gonzalez case.

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Tuesday is the scheduled day for the court to hear oral arguments in the case. The high court's term is due to expire in late June or early July, and a judgment is anticipated by that time.

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Some academics think that the court might yet decide against ruling on the Gonzalez case. This is due to the possibility that the justices in Twitter Inc. v. Taamneh, a case that is related to this one and is scheduled for arguments on Wednesday, would dismiss the plaintiffs' underlying claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

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Family members of Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in an ISIS attack at a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017, initiated the Twitter case. According to Mr. Alassaf's relatives, Twitter, Google, and Meta are "the vehicle of choice in distributing propaganda" and have given ISIS financial assistance.

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In court documents, Twitter, Google, and Facebook's attorneys claim that they have worked hard to remove ISIS information and that there is no clear causal relationship between the websites and the attacks in Paris and Istanbul.