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Saturday, May 20, 2023

The Gonzales case and the Supreme Court asked to define Section 230 Internet provider safe harbor limits was ended.

 Not with a bang but a whimper. Or call it a punt.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-punts-section-230

Of interest, Internet hosting responsibility - liability appears to be raised with a new slant:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated as much in her concurrence in Taamneh, writing to emphasize that “today’s decisions are narrow in important respects” and that “[o]ther cases presenting different allegations and different records may lead to different conclusions.” It’s worth remembering as well that two petitions for certiorari are now pending before the Court concerning recent legislation in Texas and Florida restricting platforms’ content moderation capabilities—cases that touch on similar questions of platform responsibility as Gonzalez and that may end up raising Section 230 issues of their own if the justices wish to consider whether the state-level laws are preempted by Section 230.

Section 230 is, after all, just a statute, and applying the ordinary rules of statutory interpretation to federal law is the bread and butter of what the Supreme Court does. The problem is that Section 230 is no ordinary statute but, rather, a nearly 30-year-old “magna carta of the Internet” upon which the trillion-dollar internet economy relies. There’s no way of avoiding either its enormous policy stakes or the fact that, as Justice Elena Kagan memorably quipped at oral argument, the justices “really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the Internet.” 

Content "moderation," a/k/a censorship raises questions of host providers crimping First Amendment rights (consider Musk's takeover of Twitter with consequent revelations of speech policing during Jack Dorsey days). Of course, related disclosure also touched upon government pressures (a/k/a friendly advice).

Crabgrass is not pretending to know vast details of that question, since it was not followed with great interest here. It was known to be a football in play, but knowing that is far short of any expertise or detailed knowledge. Most readers likely know as much or more.