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VOA VIEW -- Is the opinion of "Voice of Americans", which is a private entity not affiliated in any way with the United States government or any of its agencies. The opinions expressed here, in whatever medium or format, are not necessarily the opinions of the ownership or advertisers of this web site - 0415.

     For the last three decades, internet giants have been able to avoid legal exposure for content on their platforms, thanks to a law that differentiates the companies from online publishers. But those safeguards appear to be weakening.  Change has long been needed.

     Meta and Google, which dominate the U.S. digital ad market, find themselves as defendants in a host of lawsuits that collectively serve to undermine the long-held notion that they have legal protection for what surfaces on their sites, apps and services. Companies like TikTok and Snap are in the same predicament.

     The unifying aspect of the recent cases is that they’re crafted to circumvent Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which Congress passed in 1996 and President Bill Clinton signed into law. Established in the early days of the internet, the law protects websites from being sued over content posted by their users, and allows them to act as moderators without being held liable for what stays up.  

     Last week, a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable in a case involving child safety, while jurors in Los Angeles held the Facebook parent and Google’s YouTube negligent in a personal injury trial. Days after those verdicts were revealed, victims of the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein filed a class action lawsuit against Google and the Trump administration over allegations related to the wrongful disclosure of personal information.

     In that complaint, the plaintiffs argue that Google’s AI Mode, which serves up AI-powered summaries and links, is “not a neutral search index,” a clear effort to make the case that Google isn’t just a platform sitting between users and the information they seek.  “The plaintiffs’ bar is winning the war against section 230 through systematic, relentless litigation that is causing there to be divots and chinks in its protection,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, in an interview.

     The stakes are massive as the technology sector exits the era of traditional online search and social networking and enters a world defined by artificial intelligence, where models designed by the owners of the largest platforms are serving up conversational chats, pictures and videos that can range from controversial to potentially illegal. The financial penalties to date have been minimal — less than $400 million in damages between the two verdicts last week — but the cases establish a troubling precedent for tech giants that are betting their future on AI.

     “For so long, tech companies have used Section 230 as an excuse to avoid taking meaningful action to protect users, but especially kids from egregious harms, harassment and abuse, frauds and scams,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said in March during a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing tied to the 30th anniversary of Section 230. “It’s not that they don’t know what’s happening or even why it’s happening. It’s that to do something about it would be to hurt their bottom line. And so long as federal law provides a shield, why even bother?”  Meta declined to comment for this story. Google didn’t respond to a request for comment. Both companies said they plan to appeal last week’s verdicts.