Supreme Court to hear Google case that could impact free speech online

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John Roberts, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, from left, Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court United States, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, ahead of a State of the Union address at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, U.S., on Tuesday, February 7, 2023.

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The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in a potentially groundbreaking case with the potential to alter the force of a key law that the tech industry says has been instrumental in keeping the internet an open place that promotes free speech.

That case is known as Gonzalez v. Google, brought in by the family of an American who died in a 2015 terrorist attack in Paris. The petitioners argued that Google and its subsidiary YouTube have not done enough to remove or stop promoting ISIS terrorist videos trying to recruit members, which they argue is a violation of the anti-terrorism law. In the lower courts, Google won on the grounds that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects it from liability for what its users post on its platform.

Now that shield is in play as the signatories argue it shouldn’t apply where Google actively promotes user-generated content, such as through its recommendation algorithms.

Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle would likely welcome a tightening of Section 230, which has been criticized in Washington for years for reasons ranging from the belief that it fuels alleged Internet censorship to the belief that it protects tech companies that do little to stop hate speech and misinformation on their platforms.

But tech platforms and many free speech experts warn that the Section 230 change will have broad implications for how the internet works, incentivizing popular services to limit or slow down user posts to avoid being held accountable for what they say.

“Without Section 230, some websites would be forced to overblock, filtering content that could create any potential legal risk, and could shut down some services altogether,” Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado wrote in a January post. on the blog summarizing the position of the company. This would leave consumers with less choice to interact on the Internet and fewer opportunities to work, play, learn, shop, create and participate in the exchange of ideas online.”

Justice Clarence Thomas has previously written that the court should hear a case related to Section 230, suggesting that it has been applied too broadly and that internet platforms should perhaps be regulated more as utilities due to their widespread use. in sharing information.

The Supreme Court will also hear a separate technical case on Wednesday that could have implications for how platforms promote and take down speech on their sites. On Twitter see Taamneh, the court will consider whether Twitter can be held liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act for failing to remove terrorist content from its platform.

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WATCH: Should social media companies be held accountable for user content? The consequences of the modification of article 230

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