big Tech is back in the hot seat the U.S Supreme Court this week began oral arguments in Gonzalez V Google a lawsuit brought by the parents of an American exchange student killed during a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris they contend the internet company should be held legally liable for promoting YouTube videos created by terrorist groups the lawsuit could affect current and future protections for social media platforms and some experts say alter the structure of the internet as we know it to help explain I'm joined by Bond Benton associate professor of communication and media at Montclair State University Professor Benton I mean ultimately what we heard yesterday in the oral arguments was a lot of concern from the justices over unintended consequences what implications are possible here um we are uh looking at a real a sea change uh because I think that uh regardless of the outcome of this case people are starting to I think finally recognize that uh hostility driven by algorithm is a real thing and it is very much a real threat um what are we going to do about it and what role does the government have in policing and regulating that that is a harder question but I do hope that there's at least a cultural awareness that the content that I see uh regularly in my feed via algorithm sometimes is designed to provoke and can lead people to some very very dark places well I guess what's difficult and what even the justices said they were having a hard time wrapping their head around is how do you navigate between recommending harmful versus non-harmful content you know who decides that who's responsible for that is that something that can be laid out when we're talking about internet law and specifically this section 230 that that's being being talked about in general there has not been a great track record of Regulation coming from the government in terms of social media it's it's really it's it's untenable because the definition of what problematic content is is going to be very very squishy and finding clear direct linkages between harmful content consume and harmful actions undertaken you're just not going to find that I mean is that an issue with free speech that these companies are going to have to look at down the road um yeah and I think that uh uh like like free speech is something that I think that everybody sort of you know absolutely Embraces here um I think what people are concerned about is how uh that speech is being exercised um I think that everyone here has had the experience probably of looking at your social media feed only to find um mix between the cat videos and the the sports teams and whatnot all of a sudden you see just a patently offensive post uh why was that there why was that given to you it was given there to get engagement because they know that outrage will spark engagement this is a kind of a baked in business model to social media um I think that you know we can hope for them to be more responsible about this I don't think the government can compel it well and I mean this comes as big Tech is facing a Litany of Anti-Trust lawsuits um you know issues over uh misinformation as well as recently stemming from New Jersey you know the spread of of bullying and other content of that nature on social media so it's feels like this is the tip of the iceberg is it it absolutely is a research project that we've recently submitted that isn't currently in peer review right now looked at the manifesto that was written by the Buffalo shooter and we did data scraping on the entire Manifesto the text and image content and found that it was plagiarized from a fairly small subset of Internet sources and what we've kind of like like take away from that is that the old idea that you couldn't fully be radicalized online that someone probably is a problematic personality before they got online then they just you know went to problematic places from everything that we saw in this case it appears that the internet was integral in creating a situation where somebody engaged in a mass casualty terrorism event uh Dr Bond Benton with Montclair State University thank you so much for your Insight on this case thank you so much