A group of big tech firms is fighting to stop roughly 3,000 youth safety lawsuits from moving forward, and they just lost a critical procedural battle in court.
The lawsuits, brought by attorneys general and families, allege that Meta, Google, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Snap knew their products were addictive to children and teens and harmful to their mental health, but continued marketing them to young users for profit.
The tech companies tried to appeal against a federal court ruling that allowed those involved to file their lawsuits in court. They argued in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that a linchpin US law meant they couldn’t be sued.
That law is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, created 30 years ago. It says that platforms cannot be held responsible for things that their users post online. For years, social media companies treated it like a bulletproof vest. When users posted something bad, the company running it could claim it was the messenger, not the author.
That defense doesn’t seem to be working here. On August 10, the court ruled that Section 230 “provides a defense to liability, not immunity from lawsuits, so the appeal was premature.” This case revolves not so much around what people posted online as how the tech companies allegedly engineered their platforms to present that content to users.
