Supreme Court Retreats From Deciding Liability Immunity For Social Media Content

In its first case about the federal law that is credited with helping create the modern internet, the Supreme Court seemed unlikely Tuesday to side with a family wanting to hold Google liable for the death of their daughter in a terrorist attack.

At the same time, the justices also signaled in arguments lasting two and a half hours that they are wary of Google’s claims that a 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, affords it, Twitter, Facebook and other companies far-reaching immunity from lawsuits over their targeted recommendations of videos, documents and other content.

The case highlighted the tension between technology policy fashioned a generation ago and the reach of today’s social media, numbering billions of posts each day.

‘We really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,’ Justice Elena Kagan said of herself and her colleagues, several of whom smiled at the description.