Anti-Vaxxer’s Lawsuit Over Channel Removal Fails–Mercola v. YouTube
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 usual outcomes. Mercola…
Lawsuit Over Twitter Suspension Fails Again–Zhang v. Twitter
A Twitter user sued over his account suspension. The court dismissed the case without prejudice. Blog post coverage of that ruling here. The user tried again. Same result. Section 230. Twitter qualifies for the standard three-element test for 230: Twitter…
Preemptive Challenge to California’s Mandatory Editorial Transparency Law Lacks Standing–Minds v. Bonta
The plaintiffs in this case are Minds, Inc., Tim Pool, the Babylon Bee, and National Religious Broadcasters, which are (respectively): “a social networking app, an active social media content creator, a satirical news website, and a nonpartisan association of Christian…
YouTube Still Isn’t a State Actor–RFK Jr. v. Google
In 2020, the Ninth Circuit held that YouTube was not a state actor. It still isn’t. The plaintiff here is RFK Jr., the leading presidential candidate among the #MAGA base of the Democratic party. Even his relatives have condemned him…
Court Doesn’t Expect YouTube to Moderate Content Perfectly–Newman v. Google
This is one of several ideologically motivated lawsuits against YouTube for allegedly engaging in “discriminatory” content moderation. The initial cohort of plaintiffs were conservatives (Prager); but then as a purported “gotcha,” the law firm added LGBTQ (Divino) and people of…
Facebook Easily Defeats Lawsuit Over User Posts–Hicks v. Bradford
Whoa, what a flashback. đ” We used to see lawsuits like this 15+ years ago, but we don’t see them any more because they are so obviously doomed by Section 230. This case involves a shooting of police officers. Multiple…
Ninth Circuit Easily Dismisses Account Termination Case–King v. Facebook
This is a standard account termination case. The specific facts don’t matter to the outcome, but I enumerate a little more detail in my prior blog post. The 9th Circuit panel’s very short narrative includes: “there is no private right…
LawTuber Loses Defamation Case–Broughty v. Bouzy
Broughty, using an alias, runs the “Nate the Lawyer” channel, part of the LawTube community, with over a quarter-million followers and 27M views. Like many other LawTubers, he sided against Heard in his coverage of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial….
Another Doctor Learns Why It’s Unwise to Sue Patients
Dr. Wilbur Hah is a board-certified cosmetic surgeon in Texas. In 2020, he performed procedures for four patients, Chesson, Gage, Melton, and Robinson (tragically now deceased). All of the patients signed a âContract of Reasonable Expectationsâ that restricted “post[ing] any…
Instagram Account Termination Case Fails–Johnson v. Instagram
This is yet another account termination case. I just blogged one involving LinkedIn yesterday. Different social media service, same result–case dismissed. Johnson’s Instagram account, @LICKMYKAKEZ, had 2.8M followers. She ran a business selling adult toys and promoted the business on…