Justice Thomas Writes a Misguided Anti-Section 230 Statement “Without the Benefit of Briefing”–Enigma v. Malwarebytes
Last year, the Ninth Circuit ruled that a plaintiff could plead around Section 230(c)(2)(B), the safe harbor for providing filtering instructions, by claiming that the filtering was motivated by anticompetitive animus. Last week, the Supreme Court denied certiorari. This isn’t…
LinkedIn Isn’t a State Actor–Perez v. LinkedIn
Perez had a LinkedIn account with over 7,000 connections (really?). LinkedIn removed some of his posts and restricted access to his profile due to alleged TOU violations. State Action. Perez, proceeding pro se, alleged that LinkedIn “is subject to the…
Facebook Doesn’t Have a Duty to Prevent a Murder–Godwin v. Facebook
In 2017, Steve Stephens murdered Robert Godwin Sr. On the day of the murder, Stephens made the following post to Facebook: FB my life for the pass year has really been fuck up!!! lost everything ever had due to gambling…
Twitter Wins Another Account Suspension Case–Wilson v. Twitter
I previously blogged the plaintiff’s virtually identical lawsuit in June. The plaintiff claimed Twitter suspended his account because he’s a heterosexual Christian. The court rejected all of his claims, including his allegations that Twitter was a state actor and Twitter…
hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn Corp., the Web Scraping Saga Continues (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn Corp. is arguably the most important case in the history of web-scraping jurisprudence. In 2019, the Ninth Circuit concluded that “when a computer network generally permits public access to its data,…
Section 230 Preempts Another Facebook Account Termination Case–Zimmerman v. Facebook
Another pro se lawsuit over Facebook account terminations fails. Some background on the case. This is an easy Section 230 case: “A social media site’s decision to delete or block access to a user’s individual profile falls squarely within this…
Sen. Graham Cares More About Trolls Than Section 230 (Comments on Online Content Policy Modernization Act)
I’m blogging yet another terrible Section 230 reform proposal: S. 4534, the ‘‘Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act’’ (introduced by Sens. Wicker, Graham, and Blackburn), which has been rolled into S. 4632, the “Online Content Policy Modernization Act.” Despite the…
Court Enjoins Trump Administration’s Attempt to Kick TikTok Out of App Stores–TikTok v. Trump
As I recently explained, the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress TikTok do not benefit the American public one bit. Fortunately, the Trump administration’s efforts to “MAGA” frequently fail when challenged in court, as is the case here. This case addresses…
WeChat Executive Order Enjoined Because (Of Course) It’s Unconstitutional–WeChat Users v. Trump
A federal district court preliminarily enjoined Executive Order 13943 seeking to kick WeChat out of the United States. This is a good ruling blocking an obviously unconstitutional executive order, but the fact the federal government issued and aggressively defended yet…
Twitter Isn’t Liable for Defamatory Impersonation Account–Brikman v. Twitter
This is a pro se lawsuit, which explains why the plaintiffs tried obviously doomed arguments that (I hope) no attorney would make in 2020. The plaintiffs are affiliated with a Brooklyn synagogue, Kneses Israel of Seagate. Someone created a Twitter…