Illegal recommendation engines

A discussion on Ben Thompson's Sharp Tech podcast got me thinking about the potential consequences of the Supreme Court case Google vs. Gonzalez that is currently beginning arguments and could determine the future of Section 230. (Section 230 is essentially a piece of legislation that allows big tech platforms to moderate content without being held liable for content on their platforms)

Essentially the new twist in this case is that YouTube's recommendation engine could be interpreted as some sort of editorial direction determined by the company, therefore they can be held liable for promoting extremist content through their recommendation algorithm. (in this specific case, that extremist content potentially played a role in radicalizing a terrorist) On Ben's podcast, he basically took the view that Section 230 should be upheld, since otherwise we will end up with a lot more censorship as a result of big tech platforms becoming increasingly cautious.

However, I would like to think there's an alternative that still leads to less censorship. If the big tech platforms are no longer able to have recommendation engines, then finding good content on these platforms will become much harder. Therefore, personal recommendations will become much more important - this brings us back closer to Web 1.0, where the entire internet was driven by recommendations in the form of links from websites that you already trusted.

If these platforms are forced in this direction, Facebook and Twitter's social graph would still be effective and legal for serving content from your friends and family, but elevating and promoting content beyond that would be out of bounds. It might reduce the pathways that you could create viral content, but it does have to potential to bring a bit more humanity back to the internet. Rather than recommendation engines powered by algorithms, you would be forced to discover content through friends, family or sources you already trust. It would definitely slow content discovery down, but maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.