Supreme Court Avoids Ruling on Internet Liability Shield and Protects Social Media Giants.

The US Supreme Court has declined to rule on whether YouTube can invoke a federal law that shields internet platforms from legal responsibility for what their users post in a case brought by the family of a woman killed in a terrorist attack. Instead, the court decided that a different law, one allowing suits for “knowingly providing substantial assistance” to terrorists, generally did not apply to tech platforms in the first place. The court’s unanimous decision in the Twitter v. Taamneh case effectively resolved both cases and allowed the justices to avoid difficult questions about the scope of the 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.