Twitter to YouTube, horror looms for social media companies
In 2021, a California state court threw out a feminist blogger's lawsuit accusing Twitter Inc of unlawfully barring as "hateful conduct" posts criticizing transgender people. In 2022, a federal court in California tossed a lawsuit by LGBT plaintiffs accusing YouTube, part of Alphabet Inc, of restricting content posted by gay and transgender people.
These lawsuits were among many scuttled by a powerful form of immunity enshrined in U.S. law that covers internet companies. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 frees platforms from legal responsibility for content posted online by their users.
In a major case to be argued at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the nine justices will address the scope of Section 230 for the first time. A ruling weakening it could expose internet companies to litigation from every direction, legal experts said.
"There's going to be more lawsuits than there are atoms in the universe," law professor Eric Goldman of the University of Santa Clara Law School's High Tech Law Institute said.
The justices will hear arguments in an appeal by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old woman from California shot dead during a 2015 rampage by Islamist militants in Paris, of a lower court's ruling dismissing a lawsuit against YouTube's owner Google LLC seeking monetary damages, citing Section 230. Google and YouTube are part of Alphabet.
The family claimed that YouTube, through its computer algorithms, unlawfully recommended videos by the Islamic State militant group, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, to certain users.
A ruling against the company could create a "litigation minefield," Google told the justices in a brief. Such a decision could alter how the internet
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