Supreme Court rules in favor of tech companies in internet content liability case

Yahoo Finance legal correspondent Alexis Keenan discusses the Supreme Court's unanimous decision ruling in favor of tech companies in the internet content liability case.

Video transcript

- The Supreme Court handed a big win today to Twitter, Google, and a host of online third-party content. Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan is here with the details on that. Alexis, largely the Supreme Court leaving Section 230 untouched.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Unscathed. This is a big deal. And this decision, it's unanimous. It comes from the land's highest court, 9-0 decision with Justice Thomas writing it, saying that Section 230 will remain intact.

Now, this comes out of one of two very similar cases that kind of ran in tandem. Both of them arise from plaintiffs who said that social media companies-- Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the like-- that they contributed to terrorist attacks that ended the lives of the victims. These are the families of the victims that brought these cases. They said that the recommendations that their algorithms use to recommend videos and content, that those recommended ISIS videos, and those sympathizers use them to then carry out these attacks.

However, the court said that this case that came against Twitter specifically, that these online hosts cannot be held liable merely because the terrorist organizations use them in the same way, use these services in the same way that billions of users use this content. In the opinion, Justice Thomas writes it this way. He says the "defendants' recommendation algorithms are merely part of the infrastructure through which all the content on their platforms is filtered. Moreover, the algorithms have been presented as agnostic as to the nature of the content." That seemed to be important here in these arguments.

And what this transpires now is that it's really kind of a dead end for both of these cases. Now, with respect to the secondary case the court said, hey, Ninth Circuit, we're going to send this back to you. You take a look at this Twitter decision, and you come in line with what we're saying here. So because both of these cases are brought on such similar grounds, it looks like the Ninth Circuit is going to have to say, yes, we will abide by this. And that means that Section 230 will remain as it is for now.

- And it looks like a huge one here for the tech companies. Alexis Keenan, thank you.