Republicans are eager to stop social media companies from removing COVID-19 misinformation posts, flagging Stop the Steal rhetoric, banning racist users and purging propaganda bots. But to make that happen, the GOP needs to overturn or reform Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which has become a fixture of the right wing's culture wars, and the centerpiece of two US Supreme Court cases argued last week. But Section 230 isn't just the law that protects Twitter from being sued every time Dril dunks on Republicans; it's also what holds together the internet as we know it.
Following the high court's obvious trepidation during last Tuesday and Wednesday's hearings, experts are skeptical that the justices will hand down rulings against Google and Twitter. During Tuesday's hearing of Gonzalez v. Google, the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American killed in the Islamic State's 2015 Paris attack, asked the court to hold Google responsible for promoting ISIS' videos via YouTube algorithms. Relatives of Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in another ISIS attack — in Istanbul in 2017 — attack, argued Wednesday in Twitter v. Taamneh that the platform should have done more to restrict content generated by Islamist militants.
