In the first-ever case involving a federal law credited with helping to create the modern internet, the Supreme Court appeared to side on Tuesday with a family seeking to hold Google responsible for the death of their daughter in a terrorist attack.
In two and a half hours of arguments, the judges appeared concerned about raising the internet in the interpretation of the 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects Google, Twitter, Facebook and other companies from lawsuits over the content posted on their sites. site by others.
“We really don’t know about it. It’s not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,” said Justice Elena Kagan about herself and her colleagues, some of whom smiled at the explanation.
Congress, not the courts, should make the necessary changes to laws passed at the dawn of the internet age, Kagan said.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of six conservatives, agreed with his liberal colleagues in a case that appeared to cross ideological lines.
“Wouldn’t it be better,” Kavanaugh asked, to keep it that way and “put the burden on Congress to change it?”
The case before the court stems from the death of American student Nohemi Gonzalez in a terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. Her family members are in the courtroom to hear arguments on whether they can sue Google-owned YouTube for helping the Islamic State. spread the message and attract new recruits, in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The judges used various examples to investigate what YouTube does when recommending videos to viewers, whether the content is produced by terrorists or cat lovers. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that what YouTube was doing was not “submitting a specific item to a requester” but simply a “21st century version” of what has been happening for a long time, combining groups of items. people might want to look at it.
Justice Clarence Thomas questioned whether YouTube uses the same algorithm to recommend rice pilaf recipes and terrorist content. Yes, we have been told.
Lower courts have interpreted Section 230 to protect the industry, which the company and its allies say has fueled the meteoric growth of the internet and encouraged the removal of harmful content.
But critics argue that the company isn’t done yet and that the law doesn’t block lawsuits over its recommendations, made by computer algorithms, which direct viewers to more interesting material and keep them online longer.
Any narrowing of immunity could have dramatic consequences that could affect every corner of the internet as websites use algorithms to sort and filter large amounts of data.
Kagan notes that “every time someone looks at something on the internet, there’s an algorithm involved,” whether it’s a Google search, YouTube or Twitter. He asked Gonzalez’s family attorney, Eric Schnapper, whether agreeing with him would render Section 230 useless.
The lower court sided with Google.
Related cases, set for arguments Wednesday, include a terrorist attack on a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017 that killed 39 people and prompted lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook and Google.
Some judges suggested that Wednesday’s arguments could provide a way to avoid tough questions in Tuesday’s case. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was “a little under the weather” according to the court and participated in arguments by phone, suggested the justices send the case back to a lower court.
Separate challenges to social media laws brought by Republicans in Florida and Texas are pending before the high court, but will not be argued before the fall and a decision may not come until the first half of 2024.
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