I think Section 230 bars Mandy Cohen’s suit against Brightside. Section 230 was implemented to provide protections to online platforms for third party content posted. It states “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Here, Brightside is an interactive computer service. The one complication is that Federal law makes it a crime to “knowingly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1). One need not intend to support the organization’s terroristic activities; it is enough to “have knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization” on a list maintained by the Secretary of State. However, the very implication of Section 230 is that they will not be liable
Interestingly, this issue is about to go before the Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google. In that case, a family of a deceased victim in an ISIS attack is suing Google due to the way their algorithm recommended ISIS related YouTube videos to the terrorists, which led to them committing the crime.
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