What Consequences for High School Freshmen’s Racist Online Petition?–Plaintiff A v. Park Hill School District
Yet another case involving high school students being disciplined for doing stupid things online. Ugh. This case involves high school freshmen at a Missouri public school. In September 2021, while riding on a school bus to a football game, Plaintiff…
Facebook Defeats Lawsuit Over Account Suspension for a Voting Misinformation “Joke”–Hall v. Meta
James A. (Jim) Hall was a candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives. Right before the November 2022 election, Facebook temporarily suspended his account, cutting off his access to 2.5k friends/followers. This sounds like a potentially problematic move by Facebook,…
2H 2022 Quick Links, Part 5 (Censorship & More)
Censorship * Wired: China Is Tightening Its Grip on Big Tech * NY Times: ‘An Invisible Cage’: How China Is Policing the Future * NY Times: How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step * Wired:…
Twitter Defeats Account Suspension Lawsuit Again–Al-Ahmed v. Twitter
I previously described the case: This case involves the tragic situation where two Twitter employees allegedly became operatives for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and turned over sensitive information about the government’s critics to the Saudi Arabia government. I’m going…
2H 2022 Quick Links, Part 4 (Section 230, Consumer Reviews)
Section 230 * Ayala v. Viator, Inc., 2021 Mass. Super. LEXIS 1151 (Mass. Superior Ct. Nov. 19, 2021): The claims in the Second Amended Complaint seek to hold Defendants liable for content created and published by Defendants, not a third…
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….