Quick Links from the Past Year, Part 4 (The Algorithms; Facebook)
[Shoutout to all of the dads out there! 🎉] The Algorithms * What would happen if FB turned off its newsfeed algorithm? In February 2018, a Facebook researcher all but…
Content Moderators’ Lawsuit Over Traumatic Work Fails Again–Aguilo v. Cognizant
This case involves Cognizant, a business process outsourcer (BPO) that performed content moderation work for Facebook. (Cognizant has since exited the field). In 2021, a federal court dismissed a putative…
Anti-Cyberstalking Statute Must Be Read Narrowly to Keep It Constitutional–U.S. v. Yung
I’m blogging this in part because of the shocking facts. Ho Ka Terence Yung really wanted to attend Georgetown Law. He did an alumni interview that went poorly and was…
Quantifying the Media’s Section 230 Misreporting in 2020
2020 was filled with terrible memories, including the COVID pandemic/shutdown and Trump’s coup attempt, so it’s easy to forget how close we came to losing Section 230. In May 2020,…
Facebook Moderator Defeats Defamation Lawsuit Over Termination Explanation–Margolies v. Rudolph
This is a case in the #MeToo genre. Rudolph runs a “private” Facebook group called The Green Lounge with about 14,000 members. Margolies was a member and made in-group connections…
Quick Links from the Past Year, Part 3 (Trademarks)
Initial Interest Confusion It’s 2022 and we’re still dealing with this shit. SMH. Can we please just outright kill the doctrine and spend our time on more meaningful problems? *…
Quick Links from the Past Year, Part 2 (Copyright)
* Hebenstreit v. Merchants Bank of Indiana, 1:18-cv-00056-JPH-DLP (S.D. Ind. Aug. 26, 2021). A photo of the Indianapolis nighttime skyline has generated $825 in license fees & $135k in settlements….
“Private” Facebook Groups Aren’t Legally “Private”–Davis v. HDR
The plaintiff, Davis, is a member of two Facebook groups: “Ahwatukee411,” with over 32k members as alleged in the complaint (as the screenshot on the right shows, it’s now over…