Supreme Court of the United States

The Institute and Professor Candeub file this brief to advise the Court on the scope of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U. [...] It would also stunt the operation of market forces, which depend on the enforceability of contracts and the prevention of fraud. [...] This would work, if Google’s third prong required the provider of the information to be different from both the defendant platform and the plaintiff—that is, if the disputed content came from a third party. [...] And in practice, that is how Google, and the courts agreeing with it, understand the third prong—reading the requirement of a trilateral relationship out of sec- tion 230(c)(1) immunity and applying the provision in bilateral settings, such as when a user sues the plat- form for taking down that user’s content. [...] Congress enacted section 230 to protect freedom of speech and increase user con- trol, not to limit expression by expanding platform control Congress passed section 230 of the Communica- tions Decency Act as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an enormous legislative overhaul of tele- phone regulation—and to a very much lesser degree, the nascent industry Congress called “interactive com-.