"These companies have been given blanket immunity from action back in the nineties. Section 230, the Communications Decency Act said we can't sue Meta or TikTok because of what someone else posted on Meta or TikTok. It was actually done to incentivize the companies to moderate. Congress said you can go ahead and take down porn and don't worry, no one can sue you if you leave something up."
"You have all these parents with dead kids. In many cases, it's just crystal clear. The kid got sextorted on Snapchat and was dead that night. That wasn't a correlation. That was causation. You have kids who get on Instagram and a few weeks later they're developing an eating disorder. Not one parent has ever gotten justice or been able to face Meta in court."
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants social media companies blanket immunity from lawsuits regarding user-posted content. Originally designed to encourage content moderation without legal liability, courts have interpreted this protection so broadly that parents cannot pursue legal action even when clear causation exists between platform use and child harm. Cases include children who died by suicide following sextortion on Snapchat and others developing eating disorders after Instagram use. Despite mounting evidence of platform-caused damage, no parent has successfully sued Meta or other social media companies or obtained justice through courts. New legislation in California and Australia aims to address these gaps by establishing legal accountability for social media companies regarding child safety.
Read at The New Yorker
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