(CNN) The Supreme Court handed Silicon Valley a massive victory on Thursday as it protected online platforms from two lawsuits that legal experts had warned could have upended the internet.
The twin decisions preserve social media companies’ ability to avoid lawsuits stemming from terrorist-related content — and are a defeat for tech industry critics who say platforms are unaccountable.
In so doing, the court sided with tech industry and digital rights groups who had claimed exposing tech platforms to more liability could break the basic functions of many websites, and potentially even create legal risk for individual internet users.
In one of the two cases, Twitter v. Taamneh, the Supreme Court ruled Twitter will not have to face accusations it aided and abetted terrorism when it hosted tweets created by the terror group ISIS.
