Supreme Court To Address Section 230 For First Time

On October 3, 2022, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, No. 21-1333, to address the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.¹ The Court will consider whether Section 230(c)(1) immunizes website operators and other online service providers when they use algorithms to recommend content to users, specifically terrorism-related videos posted on YouTube by other users of the video-sharing service.

Section 230(c)(1) is famously concise, having been referred to as the "the twenty-six words that created the internet."² It says simply "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."³ Since its passage over 25 years ago, courts across the country have often construed the law to provide broad immunity to online service providers that host user-generated content.⁴ Section 230 has facilitated the