The Supreme Court Finds Terrorism Cases Against Twitter and Google Lacking. What Does it Mean for the Future of Big Tech Accountability?

Ben Lennett, a tech policy researcher and writer focused on understanding the impact of social media and digital platforms on democracy, is an editor at Tech Policy Press. Interior of the U.S. Supreme Court. Shutterstock Last week, the Supreme Court released decisions in Gonzalez v. Google, LLC, and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh. Though much was made of the Gonzalez case as the high court’s first reckoning with Section 230, its outcome was considerably more tied to the justices’ interpretation of U.S. anti-terrorism laws in the Taamneh case. As I wrote for Tech Policy Press in February, the claims in both cases rely upon the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which enables victims to sue individuals and other entities that knowingly aid and abet an act of international terrorism.  Ultimately, that’s what shaped the Court’s decision. By failing to find the plaintiffs in the Twitter and Google cases adequately stated a claim under JASTA, the Court could sidestep any major questions about Section 230. This was unsurprising for many observers, as neither complaint tried to establish that Twitter or Google directly supported the terrorist acts that precipitated the cases. Instead, the plaintiffs argued that both companies– Google, via YouTube hosting and recommending ISIS content and sharing ad revenues through its Adsense program, and Twitter, by hosting ISIS accounts and facilitating general communications–supported ISIS’s terrorist enterprise.  According to the Court’s summary in the Taamneh case, this was not sufficient:  In this case, the failure to allege that the platforms here…The Supreme Court Finds Terrorism Cases Against Twitter and Google Lacking. What Does it Mean for the Future of Big Tech Accountability?