Section 230 Applies to Police Union’s Message Board–Desilet v. East Hartford Police Officers’ Association
Courtney Desilet was a police officer for the East Hartford police department. She alleges she was the victim of workplace discrimination and harassment. Her allegations sparked chatter on the union’s message board, including anonymous messages attacking her. She sued (among…
High School Students Can Be Disciplined for Racist Private Instagram Account–Chen v. Albany School District
The Supreme Court’s Mahanoy decision left many issues for the lower courts to resolve about when schools can discipline students for social media posts. This opinion from the Ninth Circuit starts to fill in some of the gaps. The case…
My Trustcon 2022 Keynote Talk
In September, I attended Trustcon, the first annual membership conference for the Trust & Safety Professional Association (TSPA), followed by Stanford Internet Observatory’s first Trust & Safety Research Conference (co-sponsored by the Trust & Safety Foundation). For more on Trustcon,…
Ninth Circuit Easily Rejects Another Jawboning Case–Huber v. Biden
I previously described the case: Twitter suspended Huber pursuant to its COVID misinformation policy. Huber claimed that Twitter took that action in league with the Biden administration. If this setup sounds familiar, that’s because at least a dozen cases riff…
Rounding Up Some Recent Editorial Transparency Developments
Editorial transparency is generating lots of legal activity. This post rounds up some recent developments. NetChoice v. Moody As expected, both sides appealed the 11th Circuit’s NetChoice v. FLA ruling to the US Supreme Court. Florida appealed the censorship provisions….
Section 230 Protects a User Sharing an Allegedly Defamatory Facebook Event–AH v. Labana
This case involves St. Francis High School, a Catholic high school in Mountain View located just a few steps away from my home. In the wake of George Floyd’s death during the early pandemic days, racial tensions were high and…
Constituent Blocking on Twitter Is Censorship–Felts v. Vollmer
It’s a simple question: can a government official block a constituent on social media? Based on the Knight First Amendment v. Trump ruling in the Second Circuit, it looked like the answer was a decisive no. Instead, since then, the…
Messaging App Isn’t Liable for an Offline Murder (Even Without Section 230)–Roland v. Letgo
This is a tragic case involving the marketplace app Letgo. Using an alias, Brown listed a stolen car for sale on the app. The Rolands agreed to meet Brown in person to buy the car. At the meeting, Brown tried…
9th Circuit Unceremoniously Dismisses Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google–Dreamstime v. Google
I previously summarized this case: Dreamstime sells stock photos. It had favorable organic indexing that made it some money, and it bought Adwords advertising that made it more money. Dreamstime was a big enough player that it got personal support…
Prager’s Lawsuit Over Biased Content Moderation Decisively Fails Again (This Time, in State Court)–Prager v. YouTube
Adam Kovacevich has defined the “Prager Effect” as “suing Big Tech to make your MAGA censorship allegation, resulting in Courts significantly strengthening platforms’ legal rights to moderate.” Prager, which makes misleading videos that appear designed to radicalize kids to the…