High Court to Probe Tech Shield in YouTube Terrorism Video Case
The US Supreme Court will hear a case challenging whether YouTube s recommendation algorithm can receive legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that helped shape the modern internet but has faced growing criticism in recent years.
Family members of a US citizen killed in the 2015 ISIS terrorist attacks in Paris are arguing that YouTube s advanced algorithms that recommend videos to particular users allowed the terrorist group to amplify its message and radicalize its followers.
Section 230 generally protects social media platforms from the legal consequences of the content that their users create. But petitioners in the case granted Monday are arguing that the legal immunity doesn t apply when the platform itself is recommending harmful content, like ISIS propaganda and recruitment videos, which would violate the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The case, Gonzalez v. Google, appears to be the first time the country s highest court will directly weigh in on the safe harbor law, which tech companies have invoked since its enactment in 1996. In past petitions declined by the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should step in to clarify the scope of the law in an appropriate case.
Get your popcorn. My kneejerk take on this case is that we need some sort of policy on how social media shapes the news it reports — and that’s obviously what it’s doing — and Section 230 ain’t it. But how the problems created by 230 can be addressed by a court rather eludes me. Seems like a job for Congress. Funny, I know, for an institution which has trouble finding its nether region and distinguishing that from a hole in the ground. But that doesn’t mean the Court should step in. Maybe that’s what they’ll say. Maybe the court will just deny 230 protection, but on what grounds, I don’t really see, given that 230 seems like a bad law now, but not unconstitutional.