Justice Clarence Thomas has
written skeptically in recent years about broad immunity under Section 230, but he appeared surprisingly sympathetic to the theory on which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit relied in ruling for Google below – the idea that Section 230 protects recommendations as long as the provider's algorithm treats content on its website similarly. If the same algorithm that recommends ISIS videos based on a user's history and interests also recommends cooking videos to someone who is interested in cooking, Thomas asked, how can Google be held responsible for those recommendations?
I mean, the §230 status quo's survival just can't be more assured than that.
Also it sounds strange to be saying this but Thomas's logic makes perfect sense.
Eh…the focus on ‘neutrality’ here is kind of a suspect one. With modern algorithms it is almost impossible to draw a clear distinction between what algorithms are actually “neutral” and which ones are “biased”, especially as machine learning models - trained on a data subsample - have become central to these algorithms. (J. Gorsuch made this note later in the argument). Would be much safer if the court were to rule that all decision making in organization of content was covered by 230.