The high court granted this major victory to the Silicon Valley giants without entering into the broader debate over the law that has protected them for a quarter century from prosecution for the content they put online.

Specifically, it ruled on two separate cases.

In the first, the parents of a young American woman killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris filed a complaint against Google, YouTube's parent company, which they accused of having supported the growth of IS by suggesting its videos to certain users.

In the second, relatives of a victim of an attack on an Istanbul nightclub on January 1, 2017, believed that Facebook, Twitter and Google could be considered "complicit" in the attack, because their efforts to remove the contents of the IS group had not been sufficiently "vigorous".

"The fact that bad actors take advantage of these platforms is not enough to ensure that the defendants knowingly provided substantial assistance" to the jihadists, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the unanimous decision of the Court.

"We conclude that the plaintiffs' allegations are insufficient to establish that the defendants assisted ISIS in carrying out its attack," he wrote.

Section 230

Another reason for relief in Silicon Valley: the high court "declines" the invitation to clarify the scope of "section 230", a law dating from 1996 that grants judicial immunity to digital companies for content posted on their platforms.

The big companies in the sector defend tooth and nail this status of hosts - and not publishers - which according to them has allowed the rise of the Internet.

But this provision is no longer a consensus: the left accuses social networks of hiding behind this immunity to allow racist and conspiracy messages to flourish; the right, outraged by Donald Trump's ban from several platforms, accuses them of "censorship" under cover of their right to moderation.

The Supreme Court of the United States on December 4, 2022 in Washington © Daniel SLIM / AFP / Archives

Given these divergent perspectives, legislative efforts to amend the text were never successful.

At the hearing in February, Supreme Court justices also expressed doubts about the relevance of "Section 230" today, but also their reluctance to influence the fate of a law that has become fundamental to the digital economy.

"If we ever take your side, all of a sudden Google is no longer protected. And maybe that's what Congress wants, but isn't it up to Congress to decide rather than this court?" asked progressive Justice Elena Kagan.

Changing the jurisprudence could "collapse the digital economy, with all sorts of consequences for workers and pension funds etc," Judge John Roberts noted.

Their restraint has satisfied the technology sector.

"The court has rightly recognised the limited scope of these cases and refused to rewrite a central aspect of internet law, protecting freedom of expression online and a thriving digital economy," Matt Schruers, president of trade association CCIA, told AFP.

"We are pleased that the Court does not address and weaken Section 230, which remains an essential part of the architecture of the modern internet," David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends freedom of expression online, told The Messenger.

© 2023 AFP