on Thursday issued unanimous rulings on two cases that could have upended the existing legal-liability shield internet companies have regarding user posts on social media.of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. As currently interpreted, Section 230 grants internet companies broad legal protections for user-posted content on their services.
“It might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal — and sometimes terrible — ends,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Twitter v. Taamneh ruling. “But the same could be said of cell phones, email or the internet generally.” The American Civil Liberties Union praised the court’s rulings. “With this decision, free speech online lives to fight another day,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. “Twitter and other apps are home to an immense amount of protected speech, and it would be devastating if those platforms resorted to censorship to avoid a deluge of lawsuits over their users’ posts.