U.S. Supreme Court hears case on protections for Google in attacks

The Supreme Court was hearing arguments for Gonzalez vs. Google Tuesday, its first case regarding a federal law credited with protecting Google, Twitter, Facebook and other internet companies.

The argument centers on whether Google should be held responsible for the role it played in a series of terrorist attacks carried out in Paris in November 2015, which resulted in the deaths of 130 people.

One of those people lost in the attacks was 23-yearold American college student Nohemi Gonzalez, a senior at Cal State Long Beach who was spending a semester in Paris studying industrial design when Islamic State gunmen took her life.

Her family alleges that YouTube, a website owned by Google, “aided and abetted the Islamic State group,” also known as ISIS, by recommending dangerous videos to those likely to be interested in them, which is in violation of the federal Anti-Terrorism Act.

The case also marks the first time the court will take a look at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law adopted in 1996 to protect companies from being responsible for information their users post online.

Lower courts have set a precedent by broadly interpreting the law to protect the industry.

Proponents of the social media boom argue the law has allowed for exponential growth and has encouraged sites to remove harmful content.

But critics say the law does not do enough to combat the spread of harmful content, and take issue with sites’ recommendations, generated by computer algorithms, that funnel viewers to more similar content in an effort to keep them online longer.

In their main Supreme Court brief, Google argued changing this mechanism would result in dire consequences to the site’s functionality. “Recommendation algorithms are what make it possible to find the needles in humanity’s largest haystack,” said Google’s lawyers.

But lawyers representing the Gonzalez family countered. “There is, on the other hand, no denying that the materials being promoted on social media sites have in fact caused serious harm,” they said.

So far, the lower courts have sided with Google, reports The Associated Press.

Another similar case is set for Wednesday, regarding a terrorist attack at a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017 that resulted in 39 deaths and prompted a lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook and Google.

The AP also reports several other challenges to social media laws, coming from Republicans in Texas and Florida, are pending before the high court. Those cases will not be argued before the fall and decisions likely will not come until the first half of 2024.