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Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Supremes To Hear Big Tech’s Section 230 Legal Protections Case


The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up a case that challenges legal protection for big tech companies over user-generated content that could potentially usher in a new era of moderating freedom of expression on the Internet.

According to The Daily Wire the case Reynaldo Gonzalez, et al v. Google LLC would be heard asking whether tech companies make “target recommendations.”

Axios reports the case alleges YouTube aided and abetted in the death of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old American woman who was killed in the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris along with 130 others and injured more than a hundred.

The family of Gonzalez sued Google, the parent company of YouTube, arguing that the platform’s algorithms allowed and recommended terrorist-related content from ISIS to target users with “hundreds of radicalizing videos inciting violence and recruiting potential supporters.”

Google argued the claims were barred under Section 230 and has since moved to dismiss the lawsuit, Axios reports.

The Hill reports a judge dismissed the case prompting the family to appeal to the nation’s highest court.

Gonzales’ case taps into another controversial topic within the Communications Decency Act, which has a provision tucked inside the law — otherwise known as Section 230 — that says, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

The law has seen criticism from Democrats and Republicans, who argue it grants too much power to social media companies and says it favors one party over the other concerning censoring or bolstering content.

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