Google Warns Internet Will Be ‘A Horror Show’ If It Loses Landmark Supreme Court Case

The U.S. Supreme Court, hearing a case that could reshape the internet, considered on Tuesday whether Google bears liability for user-generated content when its algorithms recommend videos to users. In the case, Gonzalez vs, Google, the family of a terrorist attack victim contends that YouTube violated the federal Anti-Terrorism Act because its algorithm recommended ISIS videos to users, helping to spread their message. Nohemi Gonzalez was an American student killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, and his family’s lawsuit challenges the broad legal immunity that tech platforms enjoy for third party content posted on their sites. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, protects platforms from legal action over user-generated content, and it also protects them if they choose to remove content. Section 230 has withstood court challenges for the past three decades even as the internet exploded.

The attorney for Gonzalez’s family claimed that YouTube’s recommendations fall outside the scope of Section 230, as it is the algorithms, not the third party, that actively pick and choose where and how to present content. In this case, the attorney said, it enhanced the ISIS message. “Third parties that post on YouTube don’t direct their videos to specific users,” said the Gonzalez’s attorney Eric Schnapper. Instead, he said, those are choices made by the platform. Justice Neil Gorsuch said he was ‘”not sure any algorithm is neutral. Most these days are designed to maximize profit.” […] Internet firms swear that removing or limiting 230 protections would destroy the medium. Would it? Chief Justice John Roberts asked Google’s attorney Lisa Blatt. “Would Google collapse and the internet be destroyed if Google was prevented from posting what it knows is defamatory?” She said, “Not Google,” but other, smaller websites, yes. She said if the plaintiffs were victorious, the internet would become a zone of extremes — either The Truman Show, where things are moderated into nothing, or like “a horror show,” where nothing is.