TC Sottek

Twitter’s moderation practices are a subject of today’s case before the Supreme Court, and things have only gotten sketchier and more chaotic since a new Chief Twit took over the company.

The justices will reconvene at 10AM ET and oral arguments will begin shortly after in Twitter v Taamneh. If you need to catch up on the action in Gonzalez v. Google, check out yesterday’s coverage from Adi.

That’s the last word from the plaintiffs in rebuttal, and it’s a statement worth chewing on. There’s a lot to think about here, but the court is now adjourned until tomorrow’s arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh. Stay tuned for more coverage, and thanks for joining us!

We agree, Google. Check us out on the web: www.theverge.com.

This might be too obvious to point out, but national and international internet organizations often say they experience substantial hardship when laws are fragmented. That’s why California and the EU have been so instrumental in leading the way on internet regulation; it can be easier for platform giants to simply harmonize the rules everywhere based on the strictest regulation in one place, rather than forking their platform and policies to comply with a bunch of localities.

Google has come out swinging, pushing back fiercely against the court for “incorrect” premises in its questioning. One colorful moment that just happened: Blatt offering a hypothetical if 230 gets overturned.

Google’s attorney Lisa S. Blatt is now up in the final hour of arguments, and she’s already getting some pointed questions — off the bat, who is really responsible for one of YouTube’s recommendations? The court suggests it’s not the user, who merely uploaded content and is not responsible for how the overall system works.

DOJ pointed out during arguments that when a computer is doing things there is “no live human being” making a choice, at least on an individual basis. And that’s true when large teams of people are making distributed and collective decisions.

The DOJ is threading a needle here between respecting the expansive possibilities of Section 230 on one side and fields like antitrust law on the other. When speaking about algorithmic recommendations, DOJ says “I don’t know if we would call it the platform’s own speech but the platform’s own conduct.” I’m very curious to hear more about the overlap of “speech” and “conduct” here since a distinction has been drawn!

We’ve heard this a few times already: the court referring to an algorithm operating on “neutral terms”. Justice Gorsuch just poked a big hole in that idea by noting “some [algorithms] might even favor one point of view over another,” for example, by privileging revenue motives.