The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.
On websites that allow users to create content, content moderation is the process of detecting contributions that are irrelevant, obscene, illegal, harmful, or insulting, in contrast to useful or informative contributions, frequently for censorship or suppression of opposing viewpoints. The purpose of content moderation is to remove or apply a warning label to problematic content or allow users to block and filter content themselves.
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.
Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued on June 9, 1980 which affirmed the decision of the California Supreme Court in a case that arose out of a free speech dispute between the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, California, and several local high school students.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
In the United States, Section 230 is a section of the Communications Act of 1934 that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:
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.
A like button, like option, or recommend button is a feature in communication software such as social networking services, Internet forums, news websites and blogs where the user can express that they like, enjoy or support certain content. Internet services that feature like buttons usually display the number of users who liked the content, and may show a full or partial list of them. This is a quantitative alternative to other methods of expressing reaction to content, like writing a reply text. Some websites also include a dislike button, so the user can either vote in favor, against or neutrally. Other websites include more complex web content voting systems; for example, five stars or reaction buttons to show a wider range of emotion to the content.
Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hell banning, ghost banning, and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm. For example, shadow-banned comments posted to a blog or media website would be visible to the sender, but not to other users accessing the site.
O'Kroley v. Fastcase, Inc.,, aff'd, No. 15-6336, is a U.S. court case concerning defamation in online search results. The plaintiff, Colin O'Kroley, alleged that Google's automated snippet algorithm created a defamatory search result by falsely implying that the plaintiff had been accused of indecency with a child. The District Court granted Google's motion to dismiss the case, and found that Google had immunity from the defamation charges under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects interactive computer services from being held liable as a speaker or publisher for information provided by a third-party information content provider. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision.
FOSTA and SESTA are U.S. Senate and House bills which became law on April 11, 2018. They clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amend the Section 230 safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity. Senate sponsor Rob Portman had previously led an investigation into the online classifieds service Backpage, and argued that Section 230 was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.
The EARN IT Act is a proposed legislation first introduced in 2020 in the United States Congress. It aims to amend Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which allows operators of websites to remove user-posted content that they deem inappropriate, and provides them with immunity from civil lawsuits related to such posting. Section 230 is the only surviving portion of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is an EU regulation adopted in 2022 that addresses illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation. It updates the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 in EU law, and was proposed alongside the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Algorithmic radicalization is the concept that recommender algorithms on popular social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook drive users toward progressively more extreme content over time, leading to them developing radicalized extremist political views. Algorithms record user interactions, from likes/dislikes to amount of time spent on posts, to generate endless media aimed to keep users engaged. Through echo chamber channels, the consumer is driven to be more polarized through preferences in media and self-confirmation.
An Act Relating to censorship of or certain other interference with digital expression, including expression on social media platforms or through electronic mail messages, also known as Texas House Bill 20 (HB20), is a Texas anti-deplatforming law enacted on September 9, 2021.
Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, 603 U.S. ___ (2024), were United States Supreme Court cases related to protected speech under the First Amendment and content moderation by interactive service providers on the Internet under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Moody and Paxton were challenges to two state statutes – enacted in Florida and Texas, respectively – that sought to limit this moderation. In July 2024, the justices vacated the lower-court decisions in both cases due to both courts failing to perform a full First Amendment assessment of the laws, and remanded them for further consideration.
Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, 598 U.S. 471 (2023), was a case of the Supreme Court of the United States. The case considered whether Internet service providers are liable for "aiding and abetting" a designated foreign terrorist organization in an "act of international terrorism", on account of recommending such content posted by users, under Section 2333 of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Along with Gonzalez v. Google LLC, Taamneh is one of two cases where social media companies are accused of aiding and abetting terrorism in violation of the law. The cases were decided together in a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled that Taamneh's case could proceed. The cases challenge the broad liability immunity for hosting and recommending terrorist content that websites have enjoyed.
Force v. Facebook, Inc., 934 F.3d 53 was a 2019 decision by the US Second Circuit Appeals Court holding that Section 230 bars civil terrorism claims against social media companies and internet service providers, the first federal appellate court to do so.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down three per curiam opinions during its 2022 term, which began October 3, 2022 and concluded October 1, 2023.
Anderson v. TikTok, 2:22-cv-01849,, is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in which the court held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), 47 U.S.C. § 230, does not bar claims against TikTok, a video-sharing social media platform, regarding TikTok's recommendations to users via its algorithm.
