Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1496_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 9.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

§2333(d)(2),  plaintiffs  sued  three  major  social-media  com-
panies—Facebook,  Inc.,  Google,  Inc.,  and  Twitter,  Inc.— 
claiming  that  they  aided  and  abetted  ISIS  and  thus  were
liable for the Reina nightclub attack.3 

As is common knowledge, these three companies control
three of the largest and most ubiquitous platforms on the 
internet: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.  At the time of 
the Reina attack, Facebook had over 2 billion active users 
each month, YouTube had over 1 billion, and Twitter had 
around 330 million.  See Facebook, Inc., Form 10–K for Fis-
cal Year Ended Dec. 31, 2017, p. 34; Twitter, Inc., Form 10–
K  for  Fiscal  Year  Ended  Dec.  31,  2017,  p.  47;  YouTube, 
YouTube  Hits  a  Billion  Monthly  Users  (Mar.  21,  2013),
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/onebillionstrong.  At 
least  for  Facebook  and  YouTube,  those  numbers  are  even 
higher today.  See Meta Platforms, Inc., Form 10–K for Fis-
cal  Year  Ended  Dec.  31,  2022,  p.  56  (nearly  3  billion); 
L.  Ceci,  Statista,  YouTube–Statistics  &  Facts  (Mar.
22,  2023),  https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/ 
#topicOverview (2.56 billion).

Everyone before us today agrees on the basic aspects of 
these platforms’ business models.  People from around the
world can sign up for the platforms and start posting con-
tent on them, free of charge and without much (if any) ad-
vance screening by defendants.  Once on the platforms, us-
ers can upload messages, videos, and other types of content, 
which others on the platform can then view, respond to, and
share.  As  noted  above,  billions  of  people  have  done  just 
that.  As a result, the amount of content on defendants’ plat-
forms is staggering.  It appears that for every minute of the 
day,  approximately  500  hours  of  video  are  uploaded  to 

—————— 

3 Although Twitter, Inc., is the named petitioner and defendant, Twit-
ter, Inc., has since been merged into X Corp., a subsidiary of X Holdings
Corp.  Similarly,  although  Facebook,  Inc.,  and  Google,  Inc.,  are  the 
named defendants, Facebook, Inc., is now known as Meta Platforms, Inc., 
and Google, Inc., is now Google LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc.