Supreme Court Sidesteps Ruling on Scope of Section 230

“So, for example,” Justice Thomas wrote, “a person who watches cooking shows on YouTube is more likely to see cooking-based videos and advertisements for cookbooks, whereas someone who likes to watch professorial lectures might see collegiate debates and advertisements for TED Talks.

“But,” he added, “not all of the content on defendants’ platforms is so benign.” In particular, “ISIS uploaded videos that fund-raised for weapons of terror and that showed brutal executions of soldiers and civilians alike.”

The platforms’ failure to remove such content, Justice Thomas wrote, was not enough to establish liability for aiding and abetting, which he said required plausible allegations that they “gave such knowing and substantial assistance to ISIS that they culpably participated in the Reina attack.”

The plaintiffs had not cleared that bar, Justice Thomas wrote. “Plaintiffs’ claims fall far short of plausibly alleging that defendants aided and abetted the Reina attack,” he wrote.

The platforms’ algorithms did not change the analysis, he wrote.

“The algorithms appear agnostic as to the nature of the content, matching any content (including ISIS’ content) with any user who is more likely to view that content,” Justice Thomas wrote. “The fact that these algorithms matched some ISIS content with some users thus does not convert defendants’ passive assistance into active abetting.”

A contrary ruling, he added, would expose the platforms to potential liability for “each and every ISIS terrorist act committed anywhere in the world.”

The court’s decision in the case, Twitter v. Taamneh, No. 21-1496, allowed the justices to avoid ruling on the scope of Section 230, a law intended to nurture what was then a nascent creation called the internet.