Platforms in the dock: The changing rules of internet liability

A TREND IN LAWSUITS IS UNFOLDING: suing not just the author of alleged infringing content, but the platform itself. Consider the example of an ongoing matter — the Isha Foundation case. After a YouTube video was uploaded defaming the spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev, the Foundation sued not only the video’s author, but explicitly named Google LLC & Ors. as respondents. The Delhi High Court directed Google LLC, X Corp, and Meta Platforms to pull down the video. The question is whether tech giants are being pulled into the arena as co-defendants for third-party content.

Under India’s legal framework, Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 shields intermediaries only if they act as passive conduits and follow due-diligence rules. Courts have interpreted “actual knowledge” to mean a formal court or government order. Indian platforms must comply with takedown demands from authorities or face liability. In practice, an intermediary “has no choice but to comply with the Centre’s directions to continue operations,” and if it does so it “generally avoid[s] further legal consequences”. The intermediaries cannot pick and choose which orders to follow – if a court orders content to be removed, they must remove it promptly to keep the shield of Section 79.

Listing “intermediary” such as Google or Facebook as co-defendants follows a broader pattern of suing platforms and users together over allegedly defamatory or false content. Another example is the Vishakha Industries v. Google litigation: Vishakha sued Google in 2009 for defamation due to content in a Google group. The Delhi High Court (later upheld by the Supreme Court) held that pre-2009 Section 79 did not shield Google at all – because at that time safe harbor applied only to IT Act violations, not civil defamation (After the 2009 amendment, the law does cover all third-party content, but only once a court order directs removal). 

In short, Indian law encourages platforms to comply with court orders under threat of liability, and in practice many plaintiffs will list a platform as co-defendant just to ensure the order can bind it.

Another complementing example is a lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Texas, by two families, against the creators of the AI chatbot Character AI and tech giants Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc, claiming that the chatbot created an emotionally manipulative relationship, leaving their children in distress and driving them further apart from their parents.

Should platforms remain “mere conduits” or be treated as active participants when their services enable harm? 

US Courts are increasingly probing the limits of platform immunity

U.S. law has long favored the “mere conduit” view, but new cases are probing its limits. Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, online services are broadly not treated as the “publisher” of what users post. Courts have distilled Section 230(c)(1) into a simple rule: if a party is an “interactive computer service” (like Google or Meta) and a plaintiff’s claim treats it as a publisher of another’s content, the claim is barred. 

In practice, this means platforms enjoy a “formidable” immunity from state-law claims - defamation, negligence, privacy torts, and the like - arising out of user-posted content. Even when a platform is put on notice of illegal speech, Section 230 generally protects it (the Fourth Circuit’s Zeran v. AOL (1997) decision famously held that knowing about defamatory messages doesn’t negate immunity). The intent was to let the internet flourish without platforms getting sued for every bad thing users say.