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The Supreme Court on Thursday dodged a thorny debate over whether Big Tech companies such as Google can be sued for their recommendations in a case some experts warned could fundamentally change the way the internet works.
At issue in Gonzalez v. Google was a controversial law known as Section 230, which has been widely interpreted as shielding websites from lawsuits for user-generated content. The question for the court was whether recommendations – such as a suggestion for the next video to watch on YouTube – are covered under that law. By leaving Section 230 in place, the court handed the social media firms a major win.
The bottom line was that the decisions will likely make it harder for Americans to sue tech companies for abetting in terrorism but the high court left for another day the broader questions about Section 230.
At the center of the two cases were families of people killed in terrorist attacks carried by the Islamic State group in Paris and Istanbul. The families sued the social media companies for recommending content they said aided the terrorist groups by helping them with recruitment.
But in a unanimous opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court ruled that the connection between what the social media companies did and the attack was «far removed.
