Just to be clear on what the Supreme Court has ruled here: There is *zero* liability to avoid harm with your multibillion dollar platform. Enable terrorist recruiting? You're good! https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/18/23728423/supreme-court-section-230-gonzalez-google-twitter-taamneh-ruling
@ocdtrekkie This ruling largely broke the way I anticipated it would. I was TBH a little surprised the case ever got to the Supreme Court; the allegation was that the people who had killed Gonzalez were radicalized by YouTube-algoirthm-fed videos. That’s like trying to sue Reader’s Digest because someone read a trimmed-down version of Atlas Shrugged and decided as a result to go burn down an oil field to “stick it to the moochers.”
There’s a causal chain of responsibility here that is fundamentally not recognized in our society at present, regardless of the content that was selected by the algorithm. And opening that responsibility can dumps a lot of worms on the table; it increases, for example, state authority to regulate the kind of media people are allowed to see in general because it could radicalize them. Really hard to square that approach to culture-shaping with the intent and core purpose of the First Amendment (you’re supposed to, for example, be able to tell your neighbor that capitalism is busted, or the draft is bullshit, or that algorithms are scrambling our brains, without a State arm having the authority to squelch that speech because it’s gonna radicalize someone).
@mtomczak This is an area the first amendment should not cover. The core issue is that businesses choose to design these systems to maximize profit, even at great physical harm.
@ocdtrekkie Possibly, but this case fell apart on the first piece, not the second: the question of "were these guys radicalized by YouTube videos." There wasn't sufficient evidence it was a factor in the first place, apparently (as opposed to other factors). Like blaming Karl Marx for someone reading the Communist Manifesto and later blowing up a steel mill... Was it the book, or did that mill fire them, or...?
