Supreme Court considers whether Twitter can be held liable for failing to remove terrorist content

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3 years ago

February 22, 2023

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The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a case that will help determine whether social media platforms can be held liable for aiding and abetting terrorism for failing to remove content and accounts promoting it.

The arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh follow those in a case with similar facts, Gonzalez v. Google, that explores whether tech platforms can be held responsible for promoting terrorist posts through their recommendation algorithms. In that case, the justices seemed reluctant to overhaul the key legal liability shield in question, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being held accountable for hosting their users’ posts. While many appeared sympathetic to a narrower reading of the law, several also seemed to prefer kicking the responsibility over to Congress.

In Wednesday’s case, such a consensus was more elusive, as justices tested a variety of hypotheticals on lawyers for either side as well as a representative for the U.S. government, which generally argued in favor of Twitter. U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler represented the U.S. government.

The question in the case is whether Twitter can be held accountable for aiding and abetting a specific international terrorist act because it did not take more aggressive action against terrorist content on its service, given that it generally works to moderate and remove terrorist content under its policies.

Twitter’s lawyer Seth Waxman argued that the company should not be held responsible for aiding and abetting terrorism in instances where it is not directly aware of the specific post or account in question. He said that to satisfy the anti-terrorism law’s standard for liability, Twitter would have had to provide substantial assistance to the act of terrorism and know their actions would provide such assistance.

Waxman tried to draw a distinction between an open and widely used service like Twitter and a bank that provides money to a terrorist, given Know Your Customer laws that would require a bank to collect more information before providing its services, creating a greater level of knowledge than Twitter would have.

Justice Samuel Alito said he could see two different arguments for how Twitter could win, but it’s difficult to say in each where to draw the line. The first argument would be that Twitter did not know its services would be used to carry out a specific attack and the second would be that Twitter didn’t substantially assist in the attack.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that basing a win for Twitter on the knowing standard would be difficult “because willful blindness is something we have said can constitute knowledge.”

Justice Elena Kagan at one point asked Waxman whether Twitter could be held liable if it actually didn’t enforce any policy against terrorist content on its site. Waxman said he doesn’t think it could unless it also provided “affirmative assistance” to the terrorists.

Kagan seemed to disagree with that interpretation, saying it would be obvious in that scenario that Twitter was providing substantial assistance to terrorist activity, asking, “how could it be otherwise?”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett laid out a possible framework for a ruling in favor of Twitter in her questioning of Kneedler. Coney Barrett said such an opinion might say that in order to find Twitter liable for aiding and abetting the terrorist act, the complaint would have to prove that Twitter’s service was directly used toward the terrorist attack, not just general recruitment or radicalizing.

Coney Barrett also hypothesized that the justices could say there needs to be an allegation of specific knowledge of a terrorist act in order to find a service that’s “open to all comers” liable.

Kneedler said it would be important to clarify that some businesses that are theoretically open to all, like banks, would have a more “individualized encounter” with their consumers in the course of doing business, granting them more knowledge than a platform like Twitter.

Eric Schnapper, the attorney for Taamneh, conceded that they were not alleging specific ways Twitter was used to carry out the terrorist attack, but rather general recruitment. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked if it would be illegal to sell Osama bin Laden a phone without knowing it would be used for a terrorist specific terrorist act.

Schnapper said it would not be necessary to prove the phone was used for a specific terrorist act, because it “aids the terrorist enterprise.” He later conceded that alleging bin Laden did in fact use the phone to further his terrorist activity “would be the better way to plea it.” Still, he said, the potential terrorist actions “would be fairly implicit in his name,” he said.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision on the case by June.

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WATCH: Why the Supreme Court’s Section 230 case could reshape the internet

Technology

How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

Published

11 hours ago

November 30, 2025

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How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

After the search for survivors and recovery of victims in tragic aviation accidents — like that of a UPS cargo plane shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky last month — comes the search for flight data and a cockpit voice recorder often called the “black box.”

Every commercial plane has them. Aerospace giants GE Aerospace and Honeywell are among a few companies that design them to be nearly indestructible so they can help investigators understand the cause of a crash.

“They’re very crucial because it’s one of the few sources of information that tells us what happened leading up to the accident,” said Chris Babcock, branch chief of the vehicle recorder division at the National Transportation Safety Board. “We can get a lot of information from parts and from the airplane.”

Commercial aircraft have become very complex. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner records thousands of different pieces of information. In the case of the Air India crash in June, data revealed both engine fuel switches were put into a cutoff position within one second of each other. A voice recording from inside the cockpit captured the pilots discussing the cutoffs.

“All of those parameters today can have a very huge impact on the investigation,” said former NTSB member John Goglia. “It’s our goal to to provide information back to our investigators who are on scene as quick as we can to help move the investigation forward.”

This crucial data can also help prevent future accidents. A crash can cost airlines or plane manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars and leave victims’ families with a lifetime of grief.

But in some circumstances black boxes were destroyed or never found. Experts say further developments such as cockpit video recorders and real-time data streaming are needed.

“The technology is there. Crash worthy cockpit video recorders are already being installed in a lot of helicopters and other types of airplanes, but they’re not required,” said Jeff Guzzetti, aviation analyst and former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB. “There’s privacy and cost issues involving cockpit video recorders but the NTSB has been recommending that the FAA require them for years now.”

Watch the video to learn more.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

Technology

Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

Published

2 days ago

November 28, 2025

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Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

Technology

Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

Published

2 days ago

November 28, 2025

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Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

It’s been a tough November for Palantir.

Shares of the software analytics provider dropped 16% for their worst month since August 2023 as investors dumped AI stocks due to valuation fears. Meanwhile, famed investor Michael Burry doubled down on the artificial intelligence trade and bet against the company.

Palantir started November off on a high note.

The Denver-based company topped Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. Palantir also posted its second-straight $1 billion revenue quarter, but high valuation concerns contributed to a post-print selloff.

In a note to clients, Jefferies analysts called Palantir’s valuation “extreme” and argued investors would find better risk-reward in AI names such as Microsoft and Snowflake. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets raised concerns about the company’s “increasingly concentrated growth profile,” while Deutsche Bank called the valuation “very difficult to wrap our heads around.”

Adding fuel to the post-earnings selloff was the revelation that Burry is betting against Palantir and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Burry, who is widely known for predicting the housing crisis that occurred in 2008 and the portrayal of him in the film “The Big Short,” later accused hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp vocally hit the front lines, appearing twice in one week on CNBC, where he accused Burry of “market manipulation” and called the investor’s actions “egregious.”

“The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats— crazy,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Despite the vicious selloff, Palantir has notched some deal wins this month. That included a multiyear contract with consulting firm PwC to speed up AI adoption in the U.K. and a deal with aircraft engine maintenance company FTAI.

But those announcements did little to shake off valuation worries that have haunted all AI-tied companies in November.

Across the board, investors have viciously ditched the high-priced group, citing fears of stretched valuations and a bubble.

In November, Nvidia pulled back more than 12%, while Microsoft and Amazon dropped about 5% each. Quantum computing names such as Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum have shed more than a third of their value.

Apple and Alphabet were the only Magnificent 7 stocks to end the month with gains.

Sill, questions linger over Palantir’s valuation, and those worries aren’t a new concern.

Even after its steep price drop, the company’s stock trades at 233 times forward earnings. By comparison, Nvidia and Alphabet traded at about 38 times and 30 times, respectively, at Friday’s close.

Karp, who has long defended the company, didn’t miss an opportunity to clap back at his critics, arguing in a letter to shareholders that the company is making it feasible for everyday investors to attain rates of return once “limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.”

“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said during an earnings call. “Enjoy, get some popcorn. They’re crying. We are every day making this company better, and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”

Palantir declined to comment for this story.

WATCH: Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We’ve printed venture results for the average American