'Penalizing' Social Media for Extremist Content ‘Not the Answer’: CCIA

Blaming online services “that are actively fighting dangerous content when bad actors manage to evade detection systems is not the answer,” said CCIA President Matt Schruers in a statement Thursday about oral arguments at the Supreme Court this week on whether social media platforms can be held liable for aiding and abetting terrorists (see 2301120061 and 2302210062). “Companies would likely respond by either over-sanitizing their communities or throwing up their hands and no longer patrolling for dangerous content, lest their efforts to protect users engender more lawsuits,” said Schruers. “No one wants to see this type of material online: not users, not advertisers, nor the services themselves. However, penalizing services that attempt to combat extremism when they miss needles in haystacks will discourage companies from searching at all, and make for a more dangerous internet.”