SCOTUS “confused” after hearing arguments for weakening Section 230 immunity

The body of the article seems to provide no actual examples of the justices being "confused" by the issue.

> At one point, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan pointed out that the question before the court today could be better suited to Congress since the justices are not “the nine greatest experts on the Internet.”

Is suggesting that something is better resolved by legislation (where it can be debated more openly and experts can be consulted) and not court intervention is being "confused" or is it just editorializing by someone who wants activists courts and judges and is upset that the court won't legislate from the bench. It seems to me that is the court (and Kagan) being acutely aware of their own limitations and this is a Very Good Thing.

I've seen a few of these articles and nothing I've seen so far actually demonstrates why they think the judges are confused.

I haven't read the actual transcript yet (I don't think it's out yet) but I suspect that people are misinterpreting the judges asking questions to try to understand the issue as being confused, their ability to ignore that kind of criticism and to be willing to ask "stupid" questions is a good thing which should be praised, not mocked. Judges can not be oracles of information (not on something as esoteric as the internet, not on existing case law, not even on all legislation itself).

> Darshan-Leitner is president and founder of the Shurat HaDin Law Center, an organization that helped build this case against Google and, more broadly, seeks to defend victims of terrorism while holding the private sector accountable for financially supporting terrorism

Pretty funny, considering that plenty of banks, weapons manufacturers and private militaries that quite literally fund and support terrorism worldwide are free from all scrutiny while soft targets like Google are being dragged to the Supreme Court because they allowed terrorists to have a YouTube account.

>The case before the court, Gonzalez v. Google, asks specifically whether Google should be held liable for allegedly violating federal law that prohibits aiding and abetting a terrorist organization by making targeted recommendations that promoted ISIS videos to YouTube users. If the court decides that Section 230 immunity does not apply, that single decision could impact how all online platforms recommend and organize content, Google and many others have argued.

So the author did not care to explore the impact of Section 230 immunity applying in this case, and that tells you a lot about what their opinion is about the status quo.

They were confused because the argument was made by Eric Schnapper, a very elderly law professor who has not argued before the court for a long time. He was very clumsy and disorganized in his speech. Listening to the oral argument made me confused too.

'confused' is not the right word. I think the author might mean something like 'skeptical'.

I was listening to Thomases questions, and I think I agree. He is basically saying that any choice constitutes an opinion.

He brought up a bookstore that had a section for 'reliable' books versus 'unreliable' books.

That leads to other hypotheticals. Like is a bookstore making a recommendation by putting some books at the front of the store, and some at the back? Is a bookstore making an opinion when it decides to organize books by sales instead of alphabetically?

When you start to really analyze it, it starts to seem really ridiculous IMO.

Google says their mission is to organize the world's information. But any sort of organization presents some sort of opinion.

If you go to Google and search for 'shoes' something has to come up in the top slot. Should it be zappos? The Wikipedia article on footwear? An organization with the acronym SHOES?

Finding a "neutral" algorithm is dubious.

I think the plaintiffs are correct that the algorithm, even if 'AI' (they call it that), is a decision. They make the point that whether it was a human deciding what order to show results, or a human choosing an algorithm to order results is the same (I agree).

But then the same could be said for any system. Even reddit style upvotes/downvotes is a decision.

I also think this counters the spirit of section 230. From Wiki:

> In Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., CompuServe was found not be at fault as, by its stance as allowing all content to go unmoderated, it was a distributor and thus not liable for libelous content posted by users. However, in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., the court concluded that because Prodigy had taken an editorial role with regard to customer content, it was a publisher and was legally responsible for libel committed by its customers.

Obviously the pithy response by Prodigy would have been 'Well I guess we will not moderate content at all then, if it results in our being liable' and congress did the right thing passing 230 to stop the implications of this ruling.

To believe the plaintiffs we would have to conclude that 230 protects companies who moderate content by removing it, but not who moderate content by sorting or recommending it.

IMO this is counter to the spirit of 230, which is to allow platform owners to exercise moderation without being liable for any mistakes.

Lower courts have presumably heard this before and weren't confused by it. Is the Supreme Court uniquely stupid, or is there more going on?

I hope the conservatives get what they want.

What they think will happen is that ISPs will stop removing content for violating their terms of service, a belief based on some kind of faulty understanding of reality that makes sovereign citizens look sane.

What will happen is that ISPs will start removing even more content because they will become civilly and maybe criminally liable in ten thousand different jurisdictions every time someone suggests a basement sex dungeon exists beneath a pizza parlor.