People walk past a billboard advertisement for YouTube on September 27, 2019 in Berlin, Germany.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images
The Department of Justice warned the Supreme Court against an overly broad interpretation of a law shielding social media companies from liability for what users post on their platforms, a position that undermines Google’s defense in a case that could reshape the role of content moderation on digital platforms.
In a brief filed Wednesday led by DOJ Acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher, the agency said the Supreme Court should vacate an appeals court ruling that found Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protected Google from being liable under U.S. antiterrorism law.
Section 230 allows for online platforms to engage in good-faith content moderation while shielding them from being held responsible for their users’ posts. Tech platforms argue it’s a critical protection, especially for smaller platforms that could otherwise face costly legal battles since the nature of social media platforms makes it difficult to quickly catch every harmful post.
But the law has been a hot-button issue in Congress as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle argue the liability shield should be drastically limited. But while many Republicans believe the content moderation allowances of the law should be trimmed down to reduce what they allege is censorship of conservative voices, many Democrats instead take issue with how the law can protect platforms that host misinformation and hate speech.
The Supreme Court case known as Gonzalez v. Google was brought by family members of American citizen Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in a 2015 terrorist attack for which ISIS claimed responsibility. The suit alleges Google’s YouTube did not adequately stop ISIS from distributing content on the video-sharing site to aid its propaganda and recruitment efforts.
The plaintiffs pursued charges against Google under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, which allows U.S. nationals injured by terrorism to seek damages. The law was updated in 2016 to add secondary civil liability to “any person who aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance” to “an act of international terrorism.”
Gonzalez’s family claims YouTube did not do enough to prevent ISIS from using its platform to spread its message. They allege that even though YouTube has policies against terrorist content, it failed to adequately monitor the platform or block ISIS from using it.
Both the district and appeals courts agreed that Section 230 protects Google from liability for hosting the content.
Though it did not take a position on whether Google should ultimately be found liable, the DOJ recommended the appeals court ruling be vacated and returned to the lower court for further review. The agency argued that while Section 230 would bar the plaintiffs’ claims based on YouTube’s alleged failure to block ISIS videos from its site, “the statute does not bar claims based on YouTube’s alleged targeted recommendations of ISIS content.”
The DOJ argued the appeals court was correct to find Section 230 shielded YouTube from liability for allowing ISIS-affiliated users to post videos since it did not act as a publisher by editing or creating the videos. But, it said, the claims about “YouTube’s use of algorithms and related features to recommend ISIS content require a different analysis.” The DOJ said the appeals court did not adequately consider whether the plaintiffs’ claims could merit liability under that theory and as a result, the Supreme Court should return the case to the appeals court so it can do so.
“Through the years, YouTube has invested in technology, teams, and policies to identify and remove extremist content,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement. “We regularly work with law enforcement, other platforms, and civil society to share intelligence and best practices. Undercutting Section 230 would make it harder, not easier, to combat harmful content — making the internet less safe and less helpful for all of us.”
Chamber of Progress, an industry group that counts Google as one of its corporate partners, warned the DOJ’s brief invites a dangerous precedent.
“The Solicitor General’s stance would hinder platforms’ ability to recommend facts over lies, help over harm, and empathy over hate,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. “If the Supreme Court rules for Gonzalez, platforms wouldn’t be able to recommend help for those considering self-harm, reproductive health information for women considering abortions, and accurate election information for people who want to vote. This would unleash a flood of lawsuits from trolls and haters unhappy about the platforms’ efforts to create safe, healthy online communities.”
Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Tesla shares gained about 5% on Tuesday after CEO Elon Musk over the weekend reiterated his intent to home in on his businesses ahead of the latest SpaceX rocket launch.
The billionaire wrote in a post to his social media platform X that he needs to be “super focused” on X, artificial intelligence company xAI and Tesla as they launch “critical technologies” on the heels of a temporary outage.
“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he wrote, adding that he would return to “spending 24/7” at work. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”
An outage over the weekend briefly shuttered the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for thousands of users, according to DownDetector. Earlier in the week, the platform suffered a data center outage. X has suffered a series of outages since Musk purchased the platform in 2022.
Read more CNBC tech news
Musk has previously indicated plans to step away from his political work and prioritize his businesses.
During Tesla’s April earnings call he said that he would “significantly” reduce his time running President Donald Trump‘s Department of Government Efficiency.
In the last election cycle, Musk devoted time and billions of dollars to political causes and toward electing Trump in 2024. However, a story over the weekend from the Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that Musk has grown disillusioned with politics and wants to return to managing his businesses.
Last week, Musk said in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that he planned to spend “a lot less” on campaign donations going forward.
The comments from Musk precede SpaceX’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening. Pressure is on for the company after two Starship rockets exploded in January and March.
Ahead of the launch, Musk announced an all hands livestream on X at 1 p.m.
Tesla is still facing fallout from Musk’s political foray, with protests at showrooms and other brand damage.
In April, Tesla sold 7,261 cars in Europe, down 49% from last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Tuesday that the Trump administration does not want to “harm Apple” with tariffs.
“Everybody is trying to make it seem like it’s a catastrophe if there’s a tiny little tariff on them right now, to try to negotiate down the tariffs,” Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “In the end, we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what the update is, but we don’t want to harm Apple.”
Hassett’s comments come after President Donald Trump said in a social media post that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. Apple has historically manufactured its products in foreign countries including China, India and Vietnam.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote in the post. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!”
By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
Read more CNBC tech news
“If you think that Apple has a factory some place that’s got a set number of iPhones that it produces and it needs to sell them no matter what, then Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers, because it’s an elastic supply,” Hassett said.
Hasset’s comments continue the administration’s push to pressure companies to shoulder the cost burden of Trump’s tariffs, instead of raising prices for consumers.
Earlier this month, Trump told retail giant Walmart to “EAT THE TARIFFS” after the company warned it would have to pass those added costs on.
Shares of Apple were up more than 1% Tuesday.
Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Dr. Priti Patel, CMIO at John Muir Health, uses Ambience before starting a patient encounter.
Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare
Artificial intelligence startup Ambience Healthcare on Tuesday announced a new medical coding model that outperforms doctors by 27%.
Ambience uses AI to draft clinical notes in real-time as doctors consensually record their visits with patients. The company used tools from OpenAI to build the new model.
The startup is part of a fiercely competitive market that has taken off as health-care executives search for solutions to help reduce staff burnout and daunting administrative workloads.
The company’s new model can listen to patient encounters and identify ICD-10 codes, which are internationally standardized classifications for different diseases and conditions. There are about 70,000 ICD-10 codes that are regularly updated and used to facilitate billing and other reporting processes in health care.
Ambience said its new ICD-10 model can reduce billing mistakes and help clinicians and professional coders work more efficiently. The model notched a “27% relative improvement over physician benchmarks,” according to a release on Tuesday.
“We’re not replacing doctors or coders,” Brendan Fortuner, Ambience’s head of engineering, told CNBC in an interview.“What we’re doing is we’re liberating them from administration, and we’re fixing mistakes that help make health care better, safer, more cost-effective.”
More CNBC health coverage
Documenting ICD-10 codes has traditionally been a labor-intensive task in health care, but it’s a crucial way to track outcomes, mortalities and morbidities in a standardized way, said Dr. Will Morris, the chief medical officer of Ambience.
“If you think about it from a data perspective, it’s how you can compare and contrast clinician A to B, or health system A to B,” Morris said in an interview. “It’s the cornerstone for quality.”
Ambience’s technology is used at more than 40 health-care organizations, like Cleveland Clinic and UCSF Health. It has raised more than $100 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and the OpenAI Startup Fund.
The company is reportedly seeking fresh capital at a valuation of over $1 billion, according to a report from The Information. Ambience declined to comment on the report.
Ambience trained its new AI model using OpenAI’s reinforcement fine-tuning technology. This technology allows companies to tune OpenAI’s best reasoning models for very specific domains, like health care.
To validate the model, Ambience tested it against a “gold panel” set of labels, the company said. The labels were established by a group of expert clinicians who evaluated complex clinical cases and came to an agreement on what the right codes were.
Ambience’s AI platform for compliant documentation, CDI, and coding.
Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare
The company then recruited 18 different board-certified doctors and compared their performance on ICD-10 coding accuracy to the model’s performance. That comparison showed the Ambience technology performed 27% better than the physician baseline.
“It shows for the first time that an AI system can actually surpass clinician experts at a very, very important administrative task, especially in coding,” Fortuner said.
Ambience already has similar capabilities available for other medical codes like Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, and Fortuner said it’s exploring how to tackle other areas like prior authorizations, utilization management and clinical trial matching.
The company’s new ICD-10 model will roll out to customers over the summer.
“Getting it right at the point of care is a fundamental change,” Morris said.