Month: February 2023

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the first of two cases that could decide whether social media companies can be held liable for promoting incendiary content which have been allowed to widely circulate on the platforms, including terrorist activities. These rulings could overturn Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, and throw out longstanding federal protections that keep big tech companies from being sued over content published by independent users. The court could fundamentally determine whether the federal statute can still apply if algorithms used by the tech companies are targeting specific users with questionable content, while also spreading terrorist influence to their massive digital audiences.

The case of Gonzalez vs. Google arose out of a lawsuit filed by the family of 23-year-old Nohemi Gonzalez, an American student who was among 130 people killed in a 2015 Islamic State attack in Paris. Filed under the Antiterrorism Act, the lawsuit accuses Google – YouTube’s owner — of allowing barbaric videos to be posted to the platform, which then go viral as algorithms recommend the content to random users. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld Section 230, saying the statute protects big tech in cases where it has recommended inflammatory content — so long as the algorithm was being used in the same way for all other content. However, the lower court acknowledged that Section 230 “shelters more activity than Congress envisioned it would” and suggested that U.S. lawmakers move to clarify the scope of the law. The Gonzalez family appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court upon that decision, which agreed to hear the liability case last year. Gonzalez is the first case that the Supreme Court has heard on this topic

In the second case, victims in Twitter vs. Taamneh, which the high court has agreed to take up on Wednesday, could determine whether Twitter, Facebook and Google can be held liable for aiding and abetting international terror groups who have turned to using the platforms. The Twitter case stems from a federal lawsuit filed by the Taamneh family — relatives of Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian national who was among 39 killed in a 2017 terrorist attack in Istanbul.

Editorial credit: Michael Vi / Shutterstock.com

On Tuesday, the Biden administration released a new rule largely barring migrants who traveled through other countries on their way to the US-Mexico border from applying for asylum in the United States. The new 153-page proposed regulation marks a departure from decades-long protocol, and is the most restrictive policy put in place by the Biden administration to try and manage the US-Mexico border.

According to the text of the regulation, the proposed rule would presume asylum ineligibility and “encourage migrants to avail themselves of lawful, safe, and orderly pathways into the United States, or otherwise to seek asylum or other protection in countries through which they travel, thereby reducing reliance on human smuggling networks that exploit migrants for financial gain.” The rule would generally apply to migrants who unlawfully cross the US-Mexico border, but doesn’t apply to unaccompanied migrant children. The proposed rule will be posted in the Federal Register for a 30-day public comment period and likely take effect in May, when Title 42 is set to expire. The rule is also expected to last for two years. The United States had begun sending migrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to Mexico under Title 42 and opened a separate program that allows migrants of those nationalities and Haiti to apply to legally come to the United States. Thousands of migrants have already applied.

Editorial credit: quiggyt4 / Shutterstock.com