SIDESTEPPED

Supreme Court Gives Social Media Giants a Win in Terrorism Lawsuit

The suit alleged that certain videos on YouTube helped recruit ISIS members.

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to address a case that alleged YouTube helped radicalize a terrorist that carried out a 2015 attack on behalf of ISIS. In doing so, the court shut down potential future lawsuits against other social media companies for their housed content. This particular lawsuit—levied by the family of an American college student who was killed in the 2015 attack in Paris—is against Google, YouTube’s parent company, alleging that certain videos on its platform helped recruit ISIS members. But Google is claiming immunity under Section 230, which protects social media companies from being sued for content on their platforms posted by other users—and lower courts sided with Google. In a separate Thursday ruling against Google, Twitter and Facebook, that seeks to hold them liable for a 2017 Istanbul terrorist attack, the Supreme Court came to the same conclusion, ruling that this case also cannot go forward in the court.