ALLYN: Far-fetched to Wu, but the Supreme Court sees it differently. In a recent case involving the tech lobbyist group NetChoice, the court ruled that social media companies are protected by the First Amendment when they write the rules for their platforms. In other words, when Meta decides what you see on your Instagram feed or when Elon Musk decides what you see on X, that is a type of free expression. Daphne Keller is a former general counsel at Google.
DAPHNE KELLER: There's a lot of focus this year on platforms saying, hey, we have free speech rights, and laws are violating our speech rights because they won on that issue in the Supreme Court this year.
ALLYN: Keller says this is a shift. For decades, internet companies used a powerful legal shield known as Section 230 to fend off just about any kind of lawsuit of platform would face. It says tech companies can't be held responsible for what users post to their sites. As a result, lots of lawsuits against social media sites ended quickly, Keller says.
KELLER: That determined the outcome of so many cases for years and years. And so there just wasn't a reason for U.S. courts to look at the First Amendment issues that closely until recently.
- Date Published:8.9.2024
- Original Publication: NPR