On Wednesday, January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee presided over a dramatic hearing entitled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. The gallery was filled with family members representing young victims of sexual exploitation, drug-related deaths, and adverse mental health effects of social media that can lead to chronic illness and suicide. The witnesses who provided testimony and ...

On May 18, the Supreme Court delivered opinions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh, a pair of interrelated cases in which both plaintiffs sought to hold online platforms liable for hosting material meant to inspire acts of terrorism. Because the Court unanimously found in Taamneh that there was no basis in anti-terrorism law for liability (and therefore no ...

Among the briefs filed in Gonzalez v. Google asking the Supreme Court to properly read Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is one filed by Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Mike Johnson, and fifteen other Republican Members of Congress. Presenting similar textual arguments as the brief filed by Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), highlighted here in a recent post, Sen. ...

T’is the week for year-in-review and/or looking-ahead articles. In that spirit, I recommend posts by Devlin Hartline, Hugh Stephens, and Aaron Moss. And here’s my list with commentary for your consideration: AWF v. Goldsmith Everyone in copyright world will be waiting, like Ralphie expecting his decoder ring, for the decision in this case. The highly anticipated question is whether the ...

In my recent post about Gonzalez v. Google—the Section 230 case granted cert by the Supreme Court—I expressed the view that the word “recommendation” is too charming to describe the interaction between social media algorithms and many users’ experiences. Systems capable of reinforcing suicidal ideations in a teenager or stoking violent instincts in a potential terrorist cannot sensibly be described ...

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