A Tear in the §230 Veil
9th Circuit Court rejects §230 immunity claim for Snapchat.
§230 is, unfortunately, a facet of law that is notoriously and depressingly misunderstood. I'll just like to the eternal Mike Masnick piece titled: Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act
The news of the fact that the 9th Circuit rejecting a §230 immunity claim from a tech company as prominent as Snapchat is likely to cause yet another round of misunderstood analysis. It's helpful to therefore dig into the specific controversy at play here, because the case is quite weird.
Snapchat used to have a video filter which added a speedometer. Teenagers, being the idiots that they are, used this filter to flaunt how fast they were driving and what top speeds they could attain. There was also a widespread belief of some sort of reward if someone reached 100+mph. Two boys did this and reached 123 mph, before their car hit a tree and burst into flames. The parents of the dead boys sued Snapchat, and for some weird convoluted analysis, the district court dismissed the claim citing §230. The 9th Circuit's ruling is fairly simple, it just says that §230 doesn't apply here because the theory of liability had nothing to do with who posted what information, but rather this is a straightforward dispute over negligent product design.
Here, the Parents seek to hold Snap liable for its allegedly “unreasonable and negligent” design decisions regarding Snapchat. They allege that Snap created: (1) Snapchat; (2) Snapchat’s Speed Filter; and (3) an incentive system within Snapchat that encouraged its users to pursue certain unknown achievements and rewards. The Speed Filter and the incentive system then supposedly worked in tandem to entice young Snapchat users to drive at speeds exceeding 100 MPH. The Parents thus allege a cause of action for negligent design—a common products liability tort.
Just goes to show that §230 is not as indomitable as it is often heralded to be by its detractors.