Federal courts have held for decades that interactive computer services cannot be considered publishers for the purpose of determining liability to users for content published by third parties. This area of the law was developed in the infancy of the internet, and technology has advanced leaps and bounds faster than the law has.

The relevant statute in these cases is 47 U.S.C. § 230 (the Communications Decency Act of 1996), which states that “no provider or use of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In lay terms, online media platforms (think YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that host content created and/or shared by third-party users cannot be held liable unless the provider is directly responsible for creating it.