On Wednesday, a three-judge panel in the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments regarding whether a lawsuit against social media company TitTok should be revived despite a federal law that generally shields internet platforms from liability when they are sued because of content posted by users of their platforms. The lawsuit revolves around the 2021 death of a 10-year-old child who passed away after participating in a deadly “blackout challenge” promoted on TikTok. Let’s get into the details.
Background
In May 2022, Tawainna Anderson filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance Inc., over the death of her daughter, alleging “the company’s algorithm showed her daughter, Nylah Anderson, a video suggesting the blackout challenge.” In December 2021, Anderson’s daughter attempted the blackout challenge after seeing the video on TikTok. She used “a purse strap hung in her mother’s closet, losing consciousness and suffering severe injuries.” She died in the hospital five days later. After Anderson’s attorney filed suit, TikTok moved to dismiss the case, arguing that “under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it could not be held liable for publishing third-party content.”
A US District Judge in Philadelphia, Honorable Paul Diamond, agreed with the social media company and ruled that TikTok was immune from liability under “a part of the federal Communications Decency Act that shields publishers of others’ work.” The judge dismissed the lawsuit, holding that “the wisdom of conferring such immunity is properly taken up with Congress, not the courts.” The lawyer for Tawainna Anderson (the girl’s mother) said that the family would continue to fight to make social media safer so that “no other child is killed by the reckless behavior of the social media industry.”
Fast forward to this week, when a US appeals court debated whether the federal law that “typically shields internet companies like TikTok from lawsuits” is still applicable. Some of the judges questioned whether Congress, when adopting Section 230 in 1996, could have foreseen the growth of platforms like TikTok that do not just host content but recommend it to users using complex algorithms.” One of the judges stated, “I think we can all probably agree that this technology didn’t exist in the mid-1990s or didn’t exist as widely deployed as it is now.”
The lawyer for Tawainna Anderson argued to the court that though Section 230 does provide some legal protection to TikTok, “it does not bar claims that its product was defective and that its algorithm pushed videos about the blackout challenge to the child.” Lawyers for TikTok argued the opposite and warned that if the court ruled against TikTok, it would render Section 230 “meaningless” and “open the door to lawsuits against search engines and other platforms that use algorithms to curate content for their users.” This argument speaks to the growing debate in the US concerning social media companies and whether they should be liable for promoting dangerous content on their platforms to impressionable children and young adults.
Similar Lawsuit
This is not TikTok’s only lawsuit over the “blackout challenge.” In June 2022, two families sued TikTok and its parent company, Bytedance Inc., after their children died from participating in the “blackout challenge.” 9-year-old Arriani Jaileen Arroyo of Wisconsin and 8-year-old Lalani Walton of Texas both died of asphyxiation by strangulation after participating in the “blackout challenge” after they viewed videos about it on TikTok. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the families by Social Media Victims Law Center. The lawsuit alleged that the children died as a result of TikTok suggesting to them the “blackout challenge” on their TitkTok “For You pages.” For more information on this lawsuit and to read the court documents, click here.
Broader Implications for Social Media Platforms
Over the past few years, there have been a slew of lawsuits against social media companies by parents who are concerned these platforms promote dangerous and addictive content for impressionable young people, causing problems ranging from mental health issues to deaths.
Many of the large social media companies –Meta, YouTube, and Instagram are facing a growing number of lawsuits from parents around the country “seeking to hold them liable for causing young people to become addicted to their products, and in some cases causing harm including eating disorders, self-injury, and suicide.” For more information on this debate, check out an earlier blog post here.
It will be interesting to see how the lawsuits against social media companies over their alleged promotion of inappropriate content and its harmful impact on children will play out in the courts. Will the courts continue to rule in favor of the social media platforms, finding that Section 230 shields them from liability? Or, do the questions posed by the 3rd Circuit judges indicate that perhaps the 1996 law needs to be updated to reflect the digital era we now find ourselves in?
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Music: Disruptor’s Dance by Anka Mason
Blog Narration: Anka Mason
