Let Section 230 Stay
The U.S. Supreme Court is getting ready to hear arguments that will determine the limits of free speech on the internet.
Gonzalez v. Google, which the Supreme Court will hear this month, is the culmination of years of litigation. The action—a consolidation of lawsuits filed against Google, Twitter and Facebook—attempts to hold these platforms liable for their automated recommendation of content to users.
Social media platforms are publishers, not originators, of content, and as such have long been considered immune from liability according to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This case calls not just that immunity into question, but also the entire economy of the internet as we know it. Reinterpreting Section 230 to remove immunity for algorithmic recommendations would make it nearly impossible for social media platforms as we know them to function. That’s bad for the platforms, bad for social media users and bad for speech in general.