Washington – The Computer & Communications Industry Association and SIIA have filed joint amicus briefs in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in three related cases involving a California social media bill. The briefs in support of lawsuits filed by Meta, TikTok, and Google (YouTube) challenging California’s SB 976 “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media” point out that algorithms that help determine what information is displayed in a person’s social media feed are protected free speech.
The briefs state that “the district court erred when it concluded that website operators’ editorial and curatorial judgments are not ‘expressive’ when they rely on ‘predictive algorithms’.” The briefs go on to explain that the choices a digital service makes about how to rank what its users see are made by humans who write code to carry out those editorial decisions, and that those expressive choices are protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has recognized companies’ ability to make these editorial choices about what content to display and then a programmer translates that information into code.
CCIA has advocated for free speech online for more than 25 years.
The following can be attributed to CCIA President and CEO Matt Schruers:
“Protecting younger users online is a widely shared goal, and it can be met without violating free expression rights. Both the First Amendment and Section 230 provide protections for the editorial decisions websites make about what third-party content to feature. Courts have made clear that these editorial choices receive First Amendment protections independent of the technology used to make them.”
