Philadelphia, 29 August 2024 (TDI): A US appeals court has brought back the mother of a 10-year-old girl who lost her life due to a viral “blackout challenge” on TikTok, in which users were challenged to choke themselves until they blacked out, to sue the social media site.
However, the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia decided on Tuesday that Nylah Anderson’s mother may still pursue claims that TikTok’s algorithm suggested the challenge to her daughter, despite the fact that federal law normally shields internet companies from lawsuits over user-posted content.
Writing for the three-judge panel, US Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz stated that TikTok’s own suggestions produced by an algorithm on its platform are not protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996; rather, it only protects material supplied by third parties.
She said that the decision was different from other decisions made by her court and other courts that held that an online platform is not liable if it fails to stop users from sending harmful words to other people because Section 230 protects it from accountability.
But she claimed that line of thinking was rendered moot following a July decision by the US Supreme Court over whether state laws intended to limit social media companies’ ability to remove content they find disagreeable infringe on their right to free speech.
The Supreme Court ruled in those cases that “editorial judgments” regarding a platform “compiling the third-party speech it wants in the way it wants” are reflected in the algorithm.
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According to Shwartz, content curation through algorithmic means is speech produced by the firm and is therefore not covered by Section 230.
She said, “TikTok engages in its own first-party speech when it chooses what content is recommended and promoted to particular people.”
Requests for comments were not answered by TikTok.
Tawainna Anderson filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its Chinese parent firm ByteDance, and the lower court judge dismissed it on Section 230 grounds. On Tuesday, the verdict overturned that decision.
Nylah, her daughter, attempted the blackout challenge in 2021 and died. After her death, she sued, using a purse strap that was hanging in her mother’s wardrobe.
The mother’s attorney, Jeffrey Goodman, said that “Big Tech just lost its ‘get-out-of-jail-free card.”
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TikTok may decide to give minors information that emphasizes “the basest tastes” and “lowest virtues” in its “pursuit of profits above all other values,” according to US Circuit Judge Paul Matey, who largely concurred with Tuesday’s finding.
“But immunity that Congress did not provide is not something it can assert,” he stated.
