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ARTICLE · 02 MARCH 2023

Section 230 Narrowing In The Future?

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This past week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google. The petitioners are a family that unsuccessfully sued Google for aiding and abetting terrorism when their 23-year old daughter...

United StatesMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
Christopher A. Cole
Christopher A. Cole
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This past week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google. The petitioners are a family that unsuccessfully sued Google for aiding and abetting terrorism when their 23-year old daughter was tragically killed in an ISIS attack in Paris in 2015. Their lawsuit alleged that Google, which owns YouTube, violated the Antiterrorism Act's ban by recommending ISIS videos to users through its algorithms, thereby aiding ISIS's recruitment.

The 9th Circuit rejected the lawsuit, affirming its dismissal, on grounds that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (sometimes called "the law that created the internet") immunized Google's display of third-party content on the YouTube platform. As framed in the argument, however, the petitioners distinguished between platforms merely displaying content created by others (entitled to immunity), and the platform algorithms that preferentially display popular and relevant information to users (not immune). Google

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