Oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google will take place on Tuesday. Nearly 30 years after its enactment, the Supreme Court will finally consider Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act, which sets forth the basic liability regime for the internet. The Gonzalez plaintiffs are families of slain victims of the Paris, Istanbul, and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. They claim that YouTube’s targeted video recommendations motivated the terrorists who murdered their loved ones.
Section 230(c)(1), mirroring traditional liability rules for telegraphs and telephones, protects internet platforms from liability caused by their users’ statements. It simply states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service [e.g., Google] shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by” another user. If you libel your friend on Facebook, Section 230(c)(1) protects Facebook, limiting your friend’s legal recourse to suing you, but if Facebook wrongs a user with its own speech or action, Section 230(c)(1) does not apply.
In this suit, the question is whether algorithmically generated targeted recommendations should be considered “information provided by another” or the platform’s own speech. If targeted recommendations are considered YouTube’s speech, then Section 230(c)(1) provides no legal protection from this suit; if the recommendations are information provided by another, then Section 230(c)(1) offers protection. Google argues its recommendations are merely algorithmically reorganized speech of its users.
But this suit raises a more fundamental question. Because Gonzalez is the first time the court will examine Section 230(c)(1), the court may rule on how broadly that
