The US Supreme Court is reluctant to condemn Google for failing to prevent the spread of violent messages

US Supreme Court justices are hesitant to overturn a law that guarantees tech companies operating in the country are not held legally liable for content posted by their users.

Judges from across the ideological spectrum expressed concern on Tuesday over the repeal of Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, in the death of Nohemi González, a 23-year-old American student killed in Paris during a terrorist attack on November 13, 2015.

According to what the student’s family defends — as well as other organizations that have followed the case from a legal point of view — the Islamic State attackers were radicalized and joined the terrorist organization by watching videos posted on Google-owned YouTube. . For this reason, the young woman’s family claims that the video platform is “partially responsible” for her daughter’s death, according to CNN.

Faced with this charge, lower courts have sided with Google, saying that Section 230 protects the company from liability for third-party content posted on its service.

The complainants, for their part, cited recent journalistic research showing that YouTube’s — and other social networks’ — algorithm suggests which videos to watch and offers increasingly polarized and radical content, making actually to the platform in legal responsibility.

After the case reached the Supreme Court, the judges assessed this Tuesday that the repeal of the rule could lead to a “wave of lawsuits” against all kinds of platforms, as it would make them criminally liable for the content published. by their users., as reported by CNN. The discussion of Section 230 cyclically reappears on the American public scene, especially after episodes of hatred influenced by social networks or after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal of more than 50 million people, which was subsequently used for the benefit of the Donald Trump campaign.

However, from November 2022, the member states of the European Union (EU) will comply with the Law on Digital Services, which obliges the largest social networks to take greater responsibility for problematic content on them and very soon, under the threat of heavy fines.