The Supreme Court Considers the Algorithm

When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considered a lawsuit against Google in 2020, Judge Ronald M. Gould stated his view of the tech giant's most significant asset bluntly: "So-called'neutral' algorithms," he wrote, can be "transformed into deadly missiles of destruction by ISIS." According to Gould, it was time to challenge the boundaries of a little snippet of the 1996 Communications Decency Act known as Section 230, which protects online platforms from liability for the things their users post. The plaintiffs in this case, the family of a young woman who was killed during a 2015 Islamic State attack in Paris, alleged that Google had violated the Anti-terrorism Act by allowing YouTube's recommendation system to promote terrorist content. The algorithms that amplified ISIS videos were a danger in and of themselves, they argued. Gould was in the minority, and the case was decided in Google's favor.