Report from the MediaPost
In Brief – A New York state appeals court overturned a lower court decision and dismissed a lawsuit by victims of a racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo in 2022 who argued that social media platforms used by the assailant were partially responsible for the killings. In a 3-2 decision, the appellate judges said the platforms, including YouTube and Reddit, are protected from liability by both the 1st Amendment, which give platforms the right to wield editorial control over their content, and Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which immunizes platforms from lawsuits over speech posted by users. The ruling overturned a 2023 decision in Erie County Supreme Court that sided with the plaintiffs who argued that the platforms’ “unreasonably dangerous and negligent” design choices and algorithms addicted the assailant to their products, bombarded him with hateful racist ideas, and provided content educating him on how to carry out the attack. The judges in the majority noted that federal judges recently sided with Meta in a similar lawsuit over a racially motivated church shooting in South Carolina. The two judges in the minority backed the contention that algorithmic recommendations of digital platforms are not protected by Section 230 because “the targeted dissemination of particular information to individual end users does not amount to a traditional editorial or publishing decision”.
Context – Social media critics have long been pursuing legal strategies to circumvent Sec. 230. One argument is that young people are harmed by the design of the platforms that encourage “addictive” use. Another is that platform algorithms that direct content to users are not protected by Sec. 230. Several states have enacted legislation based on these arguments, but they are facing skeptical federal judges. Civil lawsuits targeting social media for faulty and negligent design are having better luck getting past initial court hurdles. Finally, the question of whether social media algorithms are covered by Sec. 230 was teed up by the US Supreme Court in the 2023 Gonzalez v Google case, but the justices passed up on ruling on the algorithm question.