The US Supreme Court will review this week a law that has protected technology companies from lawsuits over content posted by their users for more than a quarter of a century, and its decision could revolutionize the internet.
The high court dedicates two hearings, Tuesday and Wednesday, to cases presented by victims of jihadist attacks who accuse Google and Twitter of having “helped” the Islamic State (IS) group by disseminating its propaganda on the internet.
The Supreme Court, which must issue its rulings before June 30, must define the scope of a law dating from 1996, known as Section 230 and seen as a pillar of the internet boom.
The text establishes that companies in the technology sector cannot be considered “publishers” and enjoy legal immunity for content published on their platforms.
The congressmen’s idea was to protect the sector, then embryonic, from the cascade of lawsuits, to allow it to flourish, while encouraging it to remove so-called “problematic” content.
But this legal provision no longer enjoys legislative consensus: in the sectors more to the left of the Democratic Party, the technological giants are criticized for hiding behind this immunity by allowing racist and conspiratorial messages to circulate; On their side, from the right, outraged by the banishment of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) from various social networks, they are accused of “censorship” under their right to content moderation.
Given these divergent perspectives, legislative efforts to amend the text never came to fruition.
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The reform could instead come from the hand of the highest court that, for the first time, agreed to examine a file questioning the scope of Section 230.
The perspective worries the players in the sector.
”A decision that undermines the protections of Section 230 could have a catastrophic impact on all web services.”The president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Matthew Schruers, told AFP.
“It could radically change our online experiences.”, he justified.
Specifically, the Court will examine on Tuesday a complaint filed by the relatives of a young American killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris, against Google, the parent company of YouTube, which they accuse of having supported the growth of the IS group by suggest your videos to certain users.
His complaint has so far been rejected by the courts on behalf of Section 230.
But in their appeal to the Supreme Court, they believe that Google is not a “publisher” protected by this device since it “recommended” videos of the jihadist group through its algorithms.
Youtube “hates terrorism”, Google replied in an argument sent to the Court. The recommendations are, however, “indispensable” to order the “500 million tweets, 294 billion emails, 4 million gigabytes of Facebook data, and 720,000 hours of YouTube content generated every day”, he added, denying that it is an editorial work.
“Accomplice”
Proof of the importance of what is at stake, each side got a lot of support.
Google can count on civil liberties associations, both from the left (ACLU) and right (Cato Institute), in addition to the entire technology sector, including its rivals.
”Exposing online services to lawsuits for your recommendations would expose them to ongoing complaints”, warned Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) in a document addressed to the Court.
On the other side, some thirty states, Democrats and Republicans, child protection associations and police have asked the Court to make Internet companies assume their responsibilities.
On Wednesday, the highest court will take up a case pitting Twitter against the family of a victim of an Istanbul nightclub attack on January 1, 2017, but it raises a different question.
Without going into the Section 230 debate, an appeals court ruled that the social network could be prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws and considered “accomplice” of the attack, because its efforts to remove content from the IS group had not been sufficiently “vigorous”.
Twitter has turned to the Supreme Court to overturn that decision. Otherwise, “one wonders what companies can do to avoid being prosecuted in the name of anti-terrorism laws”, according to their lawyers.
Source: AFP
Source: Gestion
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