Supreme Court Upholds Protections for Social Media Platforms from Liability for User Content

The US Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Twitter and Google in two lawsuits that could have had far-reaching implications for the internet. In Twitter v. Taamneh, the court unanimously ruled that social media platforms cannot be held liable for hosting terrorist-related content that has only a distant relationship with a specific terrorist attack. In Gonzalez v. Google, the court dismissed a case that accused Google's subsidiary YouTube of aiding and abetting terrorism. The court's decision leaves in place a lower court ruling that protects social media platforms from a broad range of content moderation lawsuits under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.