Twitter and Google big win at US Supreme Court

Social media platforms Twitter and Google have registered a big win in US Supreme Court as the court ruled that internet companies can not be held accountable for the content posted on their sites. The judges debated two cases in which the families of terrorist attack victims claimed that Google and Twitter should be held accountable for aiding and abetting ISIS, which resulted in the death of their loved ones.  A family of the deceased filed a lawsuit against Twitter and other tech companies, claiming they did not do enough to combat the terrorist organisation when an ISIS-linked attacker opened fire at a nightclub in Turkey, on 1st of January, 2017, killing at least 38 people. Similar facts were given in the Google case. 

The cases mark the first time the high court dealt with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 law that broadly protects tech companies from being sued over hosting most third-party content on their websites and decisions to remove violative material. The two decisions mark a major win for the tech industry, which has argued that narrowing Section 230 could be disastrous for the internet if platforms could be sued over content-moderation decisions. But the resolution leaves the door open to future showdowns —- potentially in Congress — over the breadth of the legal protection the internet firms enjoy.