Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft back Google in key Supreme Court case

Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Twitter and other tech firms came to Google’s defence in legal briefs filed on Thursday in a US Supreme Court case that could fundamentally change the way the internet works.

The tech companies are urging the Supreme Court justices to carefully approach Gonzalez vs Google, a case centred on whether online firms should be held liable for content they recommend to users. 

A 1996 statute known as section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects companies from facing lawsuits over posts from their users, including comments, reviews, advertisements and more. The court is considering whether it is time to narrow that statute, which was written before the internet became a central part of daily life. 

However, the companies — even Microsoft and Yelp Inc, typically Google’s rivals — said  narrowing the online speech liability shield could destroy their ability to serve relevant recommendations to users. Reddit and Craigslist also joined in support.

A court decision undermining the statute could “strip these digital publishing decisions of long-standing, critical protection from suit, and it would do so in illogical ways that are inconsistent with how algorithms work”, Microsoft said in the filing. 

The plaintiffs — the family of an American woman killed in a 2015 terrorist attack by Isis — claim Alphabet’s Google, which owns YouTube, bears responsibility for the automated process that recommends videos, such as those that could contribute to radicalisation. 

The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on February 21.

A number of children’s online safety advocates, such as Fairplay and Common Sense Media, backed the Gonzalez family in the case, arguing the tech companies should face repercussions for the ways their products can harm children.

The US government partially sided with Gonzalez, arguing in some cases social media companies should be held liable for promoting harmful speech.

The companies focused the bulk of their filings on warnings about how a ruling could harm their products.  

Meta, operator of Facebook, said the case would force online companies to remove far more content than they do now. The company said changing section 230 “would incentivise online services to remove important, provocative and controversial content on issues of public concern, frustrating what Congress intended to be a vibrant marketplace of diverse perspectives”.

Microsoft said its search engine Bing and online forum LinkedIn could face “devastating and destabilising effects from a broad ruling that changes section 230“.

Microsoft said any modifications of section 230 are better left to Congress to decide.

Twitter said recommendation algorithms help organise the internet’s reams of information and make the web usable and easy to understand for users.

“Section 230 ensures websites like Twitter and YouTube can function notwithstanding the unfathomably large amounts of information they make available and the potential liability that could result from doing so,” Twitter said in its filing.

The company added it “would take an average user approximately 181-million years to download all data from the web today”. 

Yelp, in its filing, noted it “does not often align itself with Google”, but on this issue “the potential consequences for consumers and online platforms are significant”. It said it would struggle to provide useful reviews and recommendations to users without Section 230.

A number of tech company trade groups, and some smaller firms including Ziprecruiter and Indeed., filed comments about the importance of section 230 to their business models. 

Separately, the court on Friday will consider whether to take up two more cases related to section 230. The cases challenge new laws in Texas and Florida that would punish tech companies for removing political speech from their platforms. 

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