The Supreme Court is taking up its first case about a federal law that is credited with helping create the modern internet by shielding Google, Twitter, Facebook and other companies from lawsuits over content posted on their sites by others.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday about whether the family of an American college student killed in a terrorist attack in Paris can sue Google for helping extremists spread their message and attract new recruits.

Google is being hauled before the Supreme Court this week as part of a lawsuit that could radically alter the future of online speech and content moderation.

The tech giant will defend the statute known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by third parties.

Open arguments before the nine justices are scheduled to begin on Tuesday.

The case against Google was brought by the family of a woman who was killed in a 2015 ISIS terror attack in Paris.

On Monday, I received a rather curious notification on Facebook. A friend alerted me that when she tried to share a recent article of mine, the social media site automatically blurred the accompanying image, replacing it with the ominous declaration that the link contained "false information checked by independent fact-checkers."

Big majorities of Americans think tech companies are too big and too nosy and want government to rein them in, an exclusive poll by Axios and the Illinois Institute of Technology finds.

Why it matters: As technology's role in American life increases, people on both sides of today's political divide have grown wary of its influence.

Mark Zuckerberg “has unilateral control over 3 billion people” due to his unassailable position at the top of Facebook, the whistleblower Frances Haugen told MPs as she called for urgent external regulation to rein in the tech company’s management and reduce harm to society.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JANUARY 2021: In the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform Parler attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech. “If you can say it on the streets of New York,” promised the company’s chief executive, John Matze, in a June CNBC interview, “you can say it on Parler.”

AllSides reveals media bias and helps heal political polarization on free speech and other related issues, including campus speech, online censorship and hate speech.

Burst your filter bubble: understand perspectives and stances from liberals, conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between on free speech — explore fact checks, data, pro-con arguments and balanced news.

To do so, read more on our free speech Topic page.