WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court announced today it will hear two cases that could lead to landmark decisions about Section 230 liability protection for platforms.
The cases, Bloomberg reported today, marks “the court’s first test of the broad immunity social media companies have enjoyed under a provision known as Section 230, part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.”
Digital rights advocates universally consider Section 230 to be a crucial bulwark against state and corporate censorship of controversial speech, including sexual expression and legal adult content.
Section 230 “has become a target of conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, who say it lets left-leaning tech companies censor right-wing voices,” the Bloomberg report continued.
As XBIZ has reported, the 1996 provision, once part of Clinton-era a censorship package aimed at sexual content online, is the only remaining part of that legislation, which has ruled content moderation practices since the first expansion of the internet to consumers worldwide.
2 Cases Involving Social Media Platforms and Terrorist Attacks
The Supreme Court announced to day it will hear a case involving Google being sued by the family of one of the victims of a 2015 terrorist attack in Paris. The family of Nohemi Gonzalez, claims Google’s YouTube service, “through its algorithms, violated the Anti-Terrorism Act by recommending the terrorist group’s videos to other users,” Bloomberg reported.
The plaintiffs are looking for SCOTUS to legitimize a carveout of Section 230 protections concerning recommendation algorithms.
The lawyers for Gonzalez’s family have argued that, “Whether Section 230 applies to these algorithm-generated recommendations is of enormous practical importance. Interactive computer services constantly direct such recommendations, in one form or another, at virtually every adult and child in the United States who uses social media.”
Google’s counsel warned against “lightly adopt[ing] a reading of section 230 that would threaten the basic organizational decisions of the modern internet.”
SCOTUS will also hear a case against Twitter concerning another 2017 terrorist attack in an Istanbul nightclub, with the plaintiffs in that case appealing to the Anti-Terrorism Act, as a Section 230 carveout.
Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly asked for Congress to clarify the immunity provisions of Section 230, threatening in March that “assuming Congress does not step in to clarify Section 230’s scope,” SCOTUS “should do so in an appropriate case.”
Article Source : xbiz.com – XBIZ is the leading source for adult industry news.