Washington, D.C. — The American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it plans to hear arguments in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, a case focused on Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that may determine whether Big Tech firms can be held liable for content they monetize on their platforms.

“This case presents an important opportunity for the Supreme Court to limit the reach of Section 230,” said Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. “The solution is simple: if a firm is monetizing content on their platform, they should be held liable for it. Alex Jones was ordered to pay over $45 million for lying about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook. Yet Google, which made money by promoting Jones’ content more than 15 billion times, has not paid a dime. Reforming Section 230 can change that.”

Written in 1996 under a very different technological regime, Section 230 shields “interactive computer services” from liability for the third-party content on their websites. Today, Section 230 means monopolies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google can operate as ‘absentee owners,’ supercharging dangerous content across the internet and exploiting a legal framework that protects them from responsibility for how they make money. In Gonzalez v. Google LLC, the plaintiff alleges YouTube’s role in recommending terrorist videos overcomes Section 230’s liability shield.

As Economic Liberties has argued before, fixing this problem means reevaluating which companies receive Section 230 protections. If a company or website generates revenue by selling behavioral advertising, travel services, data collection, enabling commercial transactions, or otherwise monetizing the transmission of content, Section 230 should not necessarily apply. Instead the company or site should be regulated by sector-specific rules that apply to that particular line of business, as well as general torts and state criminal law.

For more information about Section 230, read Economic Liberties’ comment to the FCC and “Addressing Facebook and Google’s Harms Through a Regulated Competition Approach,” Economic Liberties’ report on the issue.

To learn more, read our policy quick take, “Ending our Click-Bait Culture: Why Progressives Must Break the Power of Facebook and Google.” 

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.