Supreme Court shields Twitter from liability for terror-related content and leaves Section 230 untouched
(CNN) — Twitter will not have to face accusations it aided and abetted terrorism when it hosted tweets created by the terror group ISIS, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court also dismissed a closely watched case about social media content moderation in a case involving Google, skipping a decision that legal experts warned might have upended the broader internet.
The rulings are wins for Twitter and other tech platforms that have faced a barrage of lawsuits from critics who allege they should be held legally responsible for societal harms, including terrorist attacks.
The Twitter decision was unanimous and written by Justice Clarence Thomas.
The court held that Twitter’s hosting of general terrorist speech does not create indirect legal responsibility for specific terrorist attacks, effectively raising the bar for future such claims. The Twitter ruling a major defeat for tech critics who have said that social media platforms must be held accountable with the threat of more lawsuits.
“We conclude,” Thomas wrote, “that plaintiffs’ allegations are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack.”
He stressed that the plaintiffs have “failed to allege that defendants intentionally provided any substantial aid” to the attack at issue, nor did they “pervasively and systemically” assist ISIS in a way that would render them liable for “every ISIS attack.”
In carrying terrorist speech, social media platforms are little different from other digital technologies, the opinion said.
“It might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal – and sometimes terrible – ends,” Thomas wrote. “But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
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