Large Roundup of Section 230 Rulings
This blog post rounds up nearly 20 Section 230 cases (and adjacent cases), mostly from the past four months, that for whatever reason I didn’t cover in a standalone blog post. Section 230’s effects are waning overall, but this post…
YouTube Exits Copyright Lawsuit Over YouTubers’ Videos–Barnes v. Sanchez
This is a copyright infringement lawsuit among pro se litigants. The dispute sideswipes YouTube, but YouTube is able to exit on a motion to dismiss. The plaintiff claims a copyright in a book, Drug Lords of Oakland. The defendants operate…
Cloudflare Defeats Lawsuit Over Nonconsensual Intimate Imagery (NCII) on Facebook–Doe v. Cloudflare
This is a putative class action lawsuit. The named plaintiff provided intimate images to her then-fiance, who (after the breakup) created fake Facebook profiles of the plaintiff and uploaded her intimate images without consent (turning the images into NCII). She…
Scammy Ad Lawsuits Keep Vexing the Courts–Huckabee v. Meta
Scammers used Mike Huckabee’s name and image to hawk CBD products in Facebook ads. I’m not in the ad’s target audience, so it blows my mind that anyone would buy anything because Huckabee touted it (or was falsely claimed to)….
Section 230 Doesn’t Apply to Generative AI Enhancements to Ad Copy (But the Plaintiffs Lose Anyway)–Bouck and Suddeth v. Meta
The blog post covers two cases involving scammy ads on Facebook that were part of a pump-and-dump for Chinese penny stocks. The first two rulings came in March. In the Bouck case, the court rejected Facebook’s Section 230 defense because…
Google Defeats “Negligent Digital Architecture” Claim–Starr™ v. Google
According to her website (sorry, no link love here), Katherine Starr™ is a 2-time Olympian (she swam on Great Britain’s swim team under the name “Annabelle Cripps“) and a sexual abuse survivor. She now spends a lot of time thinking…
Ninth Circuit Panel Goes Out of Its Way to Question Section 230–Doe v. Meta
[I’ve been sitting on this ruling for almost a month because blog posts like this are time-consuming and emotionally draining to write. It may not look it, but this post took about 6 hours to write.] This case involves a…
Section 230 Ends Lawsuit by Twitter Premium Subscriber–Taddeo-Waite v. X
This court summarizes: “At the core of Taddeo-Waite’s complaint is his desire to hold X liable for allegedly maintaining a graphic and upsetting post on its platform, amplifying the reach of that post, and hampering the extent of Taddeo-Waite’s own…
The YOLO Remand Shows Why the 9th Circuit Should Stop Carving Up Section 230–Bride v. Snap
This is the remand of the troubling Ninth Circuit Section 230 decision in Bride v. YOLO. As you may recall, the plaintiffs claims that YOLO made statements about its content moderation and the safety of its environment that the plaintiffs…
WorldStarHipHop Gets Section 230 Dismissal–Eizenga v. MediaLab
The court describes the video in question (as alleged): an anonymous social media account and online “persona” known as Rain Drops Media (“Rain Drops”) published a defamatory video falsely suggesting that Eizenga was an abusive partner who battered Monroe Capri…