OHIO SOCIAL MEDIA LAW STRUCK DOWN -
On April 16, 2025, a federal judge in Ohio ended the state’s ambitious plan to severely limit social media access for minors. The court permanently blocked Ohio’s Attorney General from...more
California’s attempt to impose content moderation transparency requirements on social media platforms has suffered a significant setback. Last month, the state reached a settlement with X Corp. (formerly Twitter), effectively...more
If you want the perfect illustration of the high-stakes world of tech acquisition, look no further than the mad scramble for TikTok. Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s wunderkind co-founder, has joined Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty...more
3/24/2025
/ Acquisitions ,
Arbitration ,
California ,
Consumer Privacy Rights ,
COPPA ,
Data Privacy ,
First Amendment ,
Mergers ,
Online Safety for Children ,
Privacy Laws ,
Regulatory Requirements ,
Social Media ,
TikTok
A groundbreaking law in Utah is poised to shake up how minors access apps. Earlier this month, Utah’s state legislature passed S.B. 142 (App Store Accountability Act), which requires major app store providers to verify users’...more
3/13/2025
/ Compliance ,
Consent ,
Consumer Privacy Rights ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Enforcement ,
First Amendment ,
Online Safety for Children ,
Parental Consent ,
Privacy Laws ,
Regulation ,
Social Media
In a rare unanimous decision, on January 17, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that bans TikTok in the United States on national security grounds so long as it has its current ownership structure. TikTok chose to make the...more
1/23/2025
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
China ,
Data Collection ,
Executive Orders ,
First Amendment ,
Google ,
National Security ,
Privacy Concerns ,
Privacy Laws ,
SCOTUS ,
Social Media ,
TikTok ,
Trump Administration ,
User-Generated Content ,
YouTube
Sick of the “very demure, very mindful” social media trend yet? The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office probably is too. Our national nightmare began on August 5 when TikToker Jools LeBron uploaded a video of herself...more
9/25/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Conspiracies ,
Data Collection ,
EU ,
First Amendment ,
Minors ,
Money Laundering ,
Music Industry ,
Social Media ,
State Attorneys General ,
TikTok ,
Trademark Registration ,
USPTO ,
Warning Labels ,
Wire Fraud
Over the past several years, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal law that provides social media platforms with immunity from liability for user content and was once hailed as “the law that gave us the...more
12/16/2021
/ Big Tech ,
Censorship ,
Civil Liability ,
Communications Decency Act ,
Disclosure ,
Discrimination ,
Email ,
First Amendment ,
Immunity ,
Online Platforms ,
Section 230 ,
Social Media
Singapore has enacted a law granting government ministers the power to require social media platforms to completely remove or place warnings alongside posts the authorities designate as false....more
As we have noted previously, the California Court of Appeal’s Hassell v. Bird decision in 2016 upholding an injunction requiring Yelp to remove certain user reviews was discouraging to social media companies and other online...more
Finding that President Trump’s Twitter feed constitutes a public forum, a federal judge in New York City held that it’s a First Amendment violation when the President or one of his assistants blocks a Twitter user from...more
Based on copyright infringement, emotional distress and other claims, a federal district court in California awarded $6.4 million to a victim of revenge porn, the posting of explicit material without the subject’s consent....more
In a decision that has generated considerable controversy, a federal court in New York has held that the popular practice of embedding tweets into websites and blogs can result in copyright infringement. Plaintiff Justin...more
In an effort to deter hate groups from tweeting sanitized versions of their messages, Twitter has began considering account holders’ off platform behavior when the platform evaluates whether potentially harmful tweets should...more
In an opinion granting a preliminary injunction preventing LinkedIn from blocking a startup’s use of information in LinkedIn profiles accessible to the entire public, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of...more
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a North Carolina law that the state has used to prosecute more than 1,000 sex offenders for posting on social media is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment....more
6/26/2017
/ Certiorari ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Copyright ,
DMCA ,
EU ,
Facebook ,
Fair Use ,
First Amendment ,
Hate Speech ,
SCOTUS ,
Sex Offenders ,
Social Media ,
YouTube
One year since agreeing with the European Commission to remove hate speech within 24 hours of receiving a complaint about it, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are removing flagged content an average of 59% of the...more
We’re trying something new here at Socially Aware: In addition to our usual social-media and tech-law analyses and updates, we’re going to end each work week with a list of links to interesting social media stories around the...more
Tale of the tape. The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which requires video service providers to destroy personally identifiable information after a specified time, doesn’t provide a private right of action for plaintiffs...more
9/30/2015
/ Data Privacy ,
Data Retention ,
Facebook ,
Facebook Friends ,
First Amendment ,
Netflix ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Social Media Policy ,
Sony ,
Suspensions ,
Video Privacy ,
VPPA ,
Workplace Bullying
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire recently struck down on First Amendment grounds a 2014 amendment to New Hampshire Revised Statute 659:35 that made it illegal for New Hampshire voters to post pictures...more
There oughta be a law? As we’ve reported previously, states all around the country have enacted laws that criminalize the posting of revenge porn—nude photographs published without the subject’s consent, often by an ex-lover...more
7/22/2015
/ American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ,
Blogs ,
Felonies ,
First Amendment ,
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress ,
Misdemeanors ,
Revenge Porn ,
Search Engines ,
Social Media ,
Tinder ,
Twitter
Poster’s remorse. It’s official – as of Jan 1, social media sites accessible in California had to begin allowing users younger than 18 “to remove, or to request and obtain removal of” posts they regret. The legislation, known...more
..Unfree speech? In the United States, the First Amendment would likely prevent the prosecution of someone who posted racist or anti-Semitic messages on a social media platform. But social media platforms operate worldwide,...more
..Big Brother isn’t just watching. A single mother in upstate New York was surprised to find that she had a Facebook page in her name, complete with photos of her, her son, and her niece. She hadn’t actually set up the page....more
10/10/2014
/ DEA ,
Facebook ,
First Amendment ,
Google ,
Government Investigations ,
Information Requests ,
Internet of Things ,
LinkedIn ,
Microsoft ,
National Security ,
Settlement ,
Twitter ,
Yahoo! ,
Zipcar
In This Issue:
FFIEC Issues Final Guidance on Social Media Usage by Financial Institutions; Uncovering a Line in the Sand: Employee Social Media Use and the NLRA; Website Operators Await Final Guidance Regarding...more
In This Issue:
Peering Into the Future: Google Glass and the Law; Ownership of Business-Related Social Media Accounts; Two Circuits Address the First Amendment Status of Facebook Activity; Collaborative Consumption –...more