Section 230 - Free Speech online

[Bern]

The Supreme Court next week will hear two cases — Gonzalez v. Google on Tuesday, Feb. 21, and Twitter v. Taamneh on Wednesday, Feb. 22 — that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online.

Nearly everyone who speaks online relies on Section 230, a 1996 law that promotes free speech online. Because users rely on online intermediaries as vehicles for their speech, they can communicate to large audiences without needing financial resources or technical know-how to distribute their own speech. Section 230 plays a critical role in enabling online by speech by generally ensuring that those intermediaries are not legally responsible for what is said by others.

Section 230’s reach is broad: It protects users as well as small blogs and websites, giants like Twitter and Google, and any other service that provides a forum for others to express themselves online. Courts have repeatedly ruled that Section 230 bars lawsuits against users and services for sharing or hosting content created by others, whether by forwarding email, hosting online reviews, or reposting photos or videos that others find objectionable. Section 230 also protects the curation of online speech, giving intermediaries the legal breathing room to decide what type of user expression they will host and to also take steps to moderate content as they see fit.

But if the plaintiffs in these cases convince the Court to narrow the legal interpretation of Section 230 and increase platforms’ legal exposure for generally knowing harmful material is present on their services, the significant protections that Congress envisioned in enacting this law would be drastically eroded. Many online intermediaries would intensively filter and censor user speech, others may simply not host user content at all, and new online forums may not even get off the ground.
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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/0...-you-need-know



Some live blog analysis of yesterday's session here:

https://rebootingsocialmedia.org/eve...live-analysis/

[Bern]

Related to the topic of free speech online, but not section 230 per se:

A New York law requiring that social media companies publish official policies for reporting and responding to "hateful" conduct has been halted with a preliminary injunction after a New York district court sided with the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the law on First Amendment grounds.

"New York tried to single out particular ideological viewpoints by requiring me and other platform operators to have policies for dealing with those viewpoints," plaintiff Eugene Volokh said in a Wednesday press release. "That's just as unconstitutional as the government targeting 'unpatriotic' speech or anti-police speech or whatever else."
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https://reason.com/2023/02/16/distri...ateful-speech/

It's just a preliminary injunction and not a final decision on the lawsuit, but it's a good sign nonetheless.

[Occam's Banana]

The Supreme Court next week will hear two cases — Gonzalez v. Google on Tuesday, Feb. 21, and Twitter v. Taamneh on Wednesday, Feb. 22 — that could dramatically affect users’ speech rights online.

Supreme Court sides with social media companies, keeps Section 230 in place
The court declined to "address the application of [Section] 230 to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief."
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaki...n-230-in-place
Hannah Nightingale (18 May 2023)

On Thursday, the court released their decision in the cases of Gonzalez v Google and Twitter v Taamneh, in which the justices sided with the social media giants.

In Gonzalez v Google, the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American who was one of 129 killed in the 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, alleged that the company had aided ISIS in violation of anti-terrorism laws by recommending videos posted by ISIS to users on YouTube, which Google owns.

The unsigned opinion stated that the court declined to "address the application of [Section] 230 to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief."

In Twitter v Taamneh, brought forth by the family of Nawrs Alassaf who was killed in a Turkish nightclub terrorist attack by Abdulkadir Masharipov, the plaintiff sought to hold Twitter, Facebook, and Google liable for allegedly aiding in the nightclub shooting.

"The nexus between defendants and the Reina attack is far removed," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the unanimous decision. "As alleged by plaintiffs, defendants designed virtual platforms and knowingly failed to do 'enough' to remove ISIS-affiliated users and ISIS-related content — out of hundreds of millions of users worldwide and an immense ocean of content — from their platforms."

"Yet, plaintiffs have failed to allege that defendants intentionally provided any substantial aid to the Reina attack or otherwise consciously participated in the Reina attack — much less that defendants so pervasively and systemically assisted ISIS as to render them liable for every ISIS attack," he continued, adding that the allegations "are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack."