吃瓜大本营

Google v. Gonzalez is the first Supreme Court case to consider the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes websites from legal liability for content provided by their users. The Court will consider whether sites lose that immunity when they 鈥渞ecommend鈥� content to their users鈥攁 practice undertaken by virtually all social media platforms. As the ACLU鈥檚 amicus brief explains, platforms have no choice but to prioritize some content over other content, and because this is an inherent aspect of publishing online, they should be immune from liability for the substance of that content under Section 230 which provides that platforms may not be treated as the publisher of third-party content for liability purposes. Every time one does a Google search, Google 鈥渞ecommends鈥� content by the order it lists its responses. The same is true for YouTube, which recommends similar videos based on a user鈥檚 choice of what to watch. If that sort of generic algorithmic recommendation is sufficient to deprive platforms of immunity, Section 230 will be rendered meaningless. And in the absence of immunity, platforms will be incentivized to censor lawful content or to feature only speech of little interest or value to users, contrary to the goals of Section 230.

On May 18, 2023, the Supreme Court noted that in light of its decision in Twitter v. Taamneh, 鈥渓ittle if any鈥� of the plaintiffs鈥� case remained viable. It was therefore unnecessary to address the question of whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunized the platform鈥檚 recommendation algorithms. The Court remanded the case to the court of appeals to determine whether any part of the plaintiffs鈥� argument could move forward in light of the Twitter ruling.