Social media giant TikTok has been sued by the United States for allegedly collecting data on children under thirteen illegally. The suit claims the app, which is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, allowed...more
8/19/2024
/ Big Tech ,
Boycotts ,
Data Collection ,
Deep Fake ,
DMCA ,
Electronic Frontier Foundation ,
Minors ,
Parental Consent ,
Section 230 ,
Securities Fraud ,
Social Media ,
TikTok ,
Twitter
In a rare example of bipartisan agreement, the dramatically named DEFIANCE (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits) Act unanimously passed the Senate. The bill allows victims of AI-generated deepfake...more
8/6/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Blackmail ,
Censorship ,
COPPA ,
Copyright Office ,
Deep Fake ,
Facebook ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Intent to Defraud ,
Metaverse ,
Nigeria ,
Pornography ,
Section 230 ,
Social Media
In our fourth installment of our six-part series examining Section 230—the segment of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes online service providers from liability stemming from content created by third...more
As we reported in 2023, Utah was the first state in the nation to enact laws limiting minors’ use of social media. In early March 2024, Republican Governor Spencer Cox effectively repealed and replaced the previously enacted...more
4/4/2024
/ Algorithms ,
Artificial Intelligence ,
Big Tech ,
Data Collection ,
Governor DeSantis ,
Immunity ,
Liability ,
Minors ,
OMB ,
Parental Consent ,
Section 230 ,
Social Media ,
Targeted Digital Advertising
In the prior two installments of our six-part series examining Section 230, the section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes online service providers from liability stemming from the publication and...more
Recent Senate hearings on social media safety have spotlighted the urgent need to protect children online, a concern that’s increasingly challenging the legal frameworks governing online platforms. Against this backdrop, the...more
In this second installment of our six-part series examining Section 230, the section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes online service providers from liability stemming from the publication and...more
11/15/2023
/ Communications Decency Act ,
Defamation ,
Distributors ,
Immunity ,
Online Platforms ,
Publishers ,
Safe Harbors ,
Section 230 ,
Third-Party ,
User-Generated Content ,
Website Owner Liability
In this second installment of our six-part series examining Section 230, the section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes online service providers from liability stemming from the publication and...more
In Jaime Rogozinski v. Reddit Inc, U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney for the Northern District of California dismissed WALLSTREETBETS Reddit community founder Jamie Rogozinski’s claims against Reddit for trademark...more
Here at Socially Aware we talk a lot about Section 230, the section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes social media platforms and other online service providers from liability stemming from content...more
Section 23o, the “26 words that changed the Internet,” is once again under scrutiny from lawmakers.
At the federal level, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary panel’s subcommittee on privacy, technology, and...more
Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act provides broad immunity to online platforms for claims arising from hosting third-party content (though just how broad is a hot issue that the Supreme Court may decide this...more
Online background report providers have proliferated on the Internet. Consumers with claims against these sites arising under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) have faced hurdles under Section 230(c)(1) of the...more
On October 24, the Ninth Circuit ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded Reddit Inc. from liability under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPA).The court considered the text...more
On October 3, 2022, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, No. 21-1333, to address the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act....more
In early March 2022, a coalition of state attorneys general launched an investigation of TikTok to determine whether the social media platform, which is popular among young Americans, causes long-term harm to them....more
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
While Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act continues to face significant calls for reform or even elimination, the recent Coffee v. Google case illustrates that Section 230 continues to provide broad protection to...more
6/10/2021
/ Class Action ,
Communications Decency Act ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Google ,
Google Play Store ,
Illegal Gambling ,
Immunity ,
Interactive Gaming ,
Leave to Amend ,
Payment Systems ,
Safe Harbors ,
Section 230 ,
Slot Machines ,
Social Media ,
Software ,
Virtual Currency
In Elliott v. Donegan, a federal district court in New York held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not warrant the dismissal of a defamation claim where the plaintiff’s complaint did not “foreclose[] the...more
8/25/2020
/ Allegations ,
Communications Decency Act ,
Defamation ,
Dismissals ,
Immunity ,
Interactive Process ,
Internet ,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ,
Media ,
Section 230 ,
Sexual Assault ,
Third-Party ,
Websites ,
Willful Misconduct
As we noted in our recent post on the Second Circuit case Herrick v. Grindr, LLC, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) continues to provide immunity to online intermediaries from liability for user content,...more
A California Superior Court’s recent ruling in Murphy v. Twitter held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded Twitter from liability for suspending and banning a user’s account for violating the platform’s...more
As we have frequently noted on Socially Aware, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects social media sites and other online platforms from liability for user-generated content. Sometimes referred to as “the law...more
Often hailed as the law that gave us the modern Internet, Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act generally protects online platforms from liability for content posted by third parties. Many commentators, including us...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
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