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

Published

3 years ago

February 22, 2023

admin

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.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

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

Technology

Navan, corporate travel and expense startup, files for initial public offering

Published

7 hours ago

September 19, 2025

admin

Navan, corporate travel and expense startup, files for initial public offering

By year-end there should be around 20 tech IPOS, says Barclays' Kristin DeClark

Navan, the business travel, payments, and expense management startup, filed on Friday afternoon to go public.

Its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that the company plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “NAVN.”

Navan reported trailing 12-month revenue of $613 million (up 32%) across over 10,000 customers, and gross bookings of $7.6 billion (up 34%), according to the S-1 filing.

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will act as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering.

Navan ranked No. 39 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, and also made the 2024 list.

The IPO market has bounced back this year, with deal activity up 56% across 156 deals (roughly 200 IPO filings in all) and $30 billion in proceeds, up over 23% year over year, according to IPO tracker Renaissance Capital. It has been the best year for IPOs since 2021, though still far below the Covid offering boom years, when over $142 billion (2021) and $78 billion (2020) was raised by IPOs.

This year’s deal flow has been highlighted by hot AI names like Coreweave, as well as some of the startup world’s most highly valued firms from the past decade, such as fintech Klarna and design firm Figma, crypto companies Circle, Bullish and Gemini, and some long-awaited IPO candidates finally hitting the market, such as Stubhub this week, though its shares have slumped since the first day of trading. Top Amazon reseller Pattern went public on Friday.

Other startups are expected to pursue deals given the increased investor appetite.

The Renaissance IPO ETF is up 20% this year.

Launched by CEO Ariel Cohen and co-founder Ilan Twig in 2015, Navan set out to disrupt a business travel sector where incumbents relied on clunky legacy tools and fragmented workflows.

The Palo Alto-based company, formerly called TripActions, refers to itself as an “all-in-one super app” for corporate travel and expenses.

Customers include Unilever, Adobe, Christie’s, Blue Origin and Geico.

It has also been pushing further into AI, with a virtual assistant named Ava handling approximately 50% of user interactions during the six months ended July 31, according to the filing, and a proprietary AI framework called Navan Cognition supporting its platform, as well as proprietary cloud infrastructure.

“We built Navan for the road warriors, for CEOs and CFOs who understand travel’s critical importance to their strategy, the finance teams who demand precision and control, the executive assistants juggling itineraries, and the program admins ensuring seamless events,” the co-founders wrote in an IPO filing letter.

“We saw firsthand the frustration of clunky, outdated systems. Travelers were forced to cobble together solutions, wait for hours on hold to book or change travel, and negotiate with travel agents. They struggled to adhere to company policies, with little visibility into those policies, and after all that, they spent even more time on tedious expense reports after a trip. We felt the pain of finance teams struggling to gain visibility into fragmented travel spending and to enforce policies, and the frustration of suppliers unable to connect directly with the high-value business travelers they sought to serve,” they wrote in the filing.

Revenue grew 33% year-over-year from $402 million in fiscal 2024 to $537 million in fiscal 2025, according to the S-1 filing. The company reported a net loss that decreased 45% year-over-year from $332 million in fiscal 2024 to $181 million in fiscal 2025. Gross margin improved from 60% in fiscal 2024 to 68% in fiscal 2025.

The business travel and expense space is crowded, with fellow Disruptors Ramp and Brex, and TravelPerk, as well as incumbents like SAP Concur and American Express Global Business Travel.

Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders.

Technology

Microsoft raises Xbox prices in U.S. due to economic environment

Published

7 hours ago

September 19, 2025

admin

Microsoft raises Xbox prices in U.S. due to economic environment

A gamer plays soccer title Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 on an Xbox console.

Sezgin Pancar | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Microsoft said on Friday that it will increase the recommended retail price of several Xbox consoles in the U.S. starting in October because of “changes in the macroeconomic environment.”

The company said it would not increase prices for accessories such as controllers and headsets, and that prices in other countries would stay the same.

While Microsoft didn’t explicitly attribute the increase to the Trump administration’s tariffs, many consumer companies have been warning for months that higher prices are on the way. President Donald Trump has issued tariffs this year on multiple countries with a stated goal to bring more manufacturing to the U.S.

“We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration,” Microsoft said on its website.

It’s the second time Microsoft has raised prices on its consoles in the U.S. this year. Rivals Sony and Nintendo have also raised console prices in the U.S. as Trump’s tariffs went into effect.

Here are the changes, according to a PDF posted on Microsoft’s website:

Xbox Series S will start at $399, up from $379 previously. A version with 1TB of storage costs $449.
Xbox Series X Digital console now costs $599, a $50 increase. The Xbox Series X with a disc drive also got a $50 increase to $649.
The most expensive version, with 2TB of storage, costs $799, up from $729.

WATCH: Fed governor doesn’t see material inflation from tariffs

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran: I don’t see any material inflation from tariffs

Technology

StubHub’s stock plunges 10% in third day on NYSE as post-IPO slump deepens

Published

7 hours ago

September 19, 2025

admin

Ticket reseller StubHub signage on display at the New York Stock Exchange for the company’s IPO on Sept. 17, 2025.

NYSE

After a long wait to get public, StubHub has had a rough start to life on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares of the online ticket vendor dropped 10% on Friday, falling for a third straight day since debuting on Wednesday. At $18.46, the stock is now down 21% from its IPO price of $23.50.

StubHub, trading under ticker symbol “STUB,” has lagged behind fellow market newcomers like online lender Klarna, design software company Figma and stablecoin issuer Circle, which delivered early returns for investors following their recent IPOs. Shares of cybersecurity firm Netskope also rose 10% on Friday in their second trading day, after an initial pop on Thursday.

StubHub had been trying to go public for the past several years, but delayed its debut twice. The most recent stall came in April after President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs roiled markets. The company filed an updated prospectus in August, effectively restarting the process to go public, and has since seen its market cap slip to about $6.8 billion from $8.6 billion at its IPO.

Founded in 2000, StubHub primarily generates revenue from connecting buyers with ticket resellers. In the first quarter, revenue rose 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. The company’s net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.

StubHub CEO Eric Baker told CNBC on Wednesday that the company expects recently introduced federal regulations around transparent ticket pricing to cause a “one-time” hit to its financial results.

Regulators are zeroing in on online ticket sellers over their pricing mechanisms and whether the companies are doing enough to keep automated purchasing bots in check. The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued StubHub rival Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, accusing it of illegal resale tactics.

While StubHub has failed to excite Wall Street, its struggles haven’t seeped into other deals as the tech IPO market continues to show signs of a resurgence after an extended dry spell. Amazon reseller Pattern Group saw its stock rise 12% on Friday, though shares initially slipped 6%.

WATCH: StubHub CEO on company’s IPO