Thousands of lawsuits against social media firms are to proceed, after a US appeals court rejected an appeal by Facebook parent Meta Platforms and ByteDance’s TikTok that sought to derail the cases.
The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the two companies’ appeal seeking to overturn a lower court ruling requiring them to face more than 3,000 cases in federal court, saying any such appeal could only be filed after a case had concluded.
The companies had argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shielded them from lawsuits claiming they failed to warn the public about the addictive nature of their offerings.
Legal immunity
They argued they didn’t need to wait for a ruling or a verdict to appeal, due to the immunity defence.
