What Should Photo Repositories Do About Blackface Photos?–Thompson v. ShutterStock
Blackface depictions have a long history of racism. In 2020, Facebook banned them as hate speech when the images “caricature” black people. At the same time, the “Black Peter” character is a long-standing (though increasingly controversial) part of Christmas celebrations…
Court Dismisses School Districts’ Lawsuits Over Social Media “Addiction”–In re Social Media Cases
[Warning: this is a 5,600 word blog post]. There are two critically important cases over “social media addiction” pending in California state court and as an MDL in the federal Northern District of California. It is an all-out brawl in…
Courts Are Rejecting Attempts to Weaponize Laws That Protect Consumer Reviews
In 2014, California enacted AB2365, sometimes called the “Yelp law,” codified at Cal. Civil Code 1670.8. The law prohibits businesses from suppressing consumer reviews (on Yelp or elsewhere). Its main substantive terms: (1) A contract or proposed contract for the…
Instagram Defeats Lawsuit Claiming It Was a “Breeding Ground” for Sex Traffickers–Doe v. Backpage
This opinion came out in March but just showed up in my alerts. Doe claims she was sex-trafficked on Instagram. Section 230 preempts her lawsuit against Facebook: “Ninth Circuit precedent interpreting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C….
Misidentified Person Loses Defamation Claim Against Tabloid–Bloom v. A360
Elon Musk “secretly” fathered twins with his subordinate Shivon Zilis. When the news came to light, it triggered a “tabloid feeding frenzy.” US Weekly published two articles on the story and posted to Instagram. Unfortunately, the photo US Weekly used…
Ninth Circuit Does More Damage to Section 230–Calise v. Meta
This is a lawsuit over scammy ads from Chinese advertisers. The plaintiffs claim Facebook “affirmatively invites” scammy ads by “actively soliciting, encouraging, and assisting scammers it knows, or should know, are using its platform to defraud Facebook users with deceptive…
YouTube Isn’t Liable for User Uploads of Animal Abuse Videos–Lady Freethinker v. YouTube
YouTube’s TOS restricts the uploading of content depicting animal abuse, defined as “content that shows the malicious infliction of serious physical or psychological harm that causes an animal to suffer.” The TOS provides additional details about what YouTube considers impermissible…
Section 230 Applies to YouTube and Google Search Results–Montano v. Washington Department of Health
The court summarizes some of the plaintiff’s concerns: all [] [D]efendants acted with malice against [] [P]laintiff who is a member of a protected class “LGBTQ” as a self-identified gay individual, causing [] [P]laintiff to suffer monetary damages including loss…
Section 230 Applies to Publication of Court Documents–Medina v. Microsoft
In 2014, Medina sued Microsoft. Microsoft’s filings made some unredacted disclosures about Medina that were repeated in an unredacted court opinion, and those documents appeared on several websites that publish court documents. In 2020, Medina got the disclosures from the…
Ninth Circuit Rejects Another Lawsuit Over Account Termination–Mercola v. YouTube
I previously described this case: Joseph Mercola ran a YouTube channel with 300k subscribers and 50M views. YouTube removed the channel for violating its medical misinformation policy (Mercola apparently peddled anti-vax views). Mercola sued YouTube for the usual things and got the…