{"id":30821,"date":"2024-08-30T10:02:13","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T14:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/?p=1074505"},"modified":"2024-08-30T10:02:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T14:02:13","slug":"third-circuits-section-230-tiktok-ruling-deliberately-ignores-precedent-defies-logic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2024\/08\/30\/third-circuits-section-230-tiktok-ruling-deliberately-ignores-precedent-defies-logic\/","title":{"rendered":"Third Circuit\u2019s Section 230 TikTok Ruling Deliberately Ignores Precedent, Defies Logic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iStock_000030723782_Large\"Step aside Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, there\u2019s a new contender in town for who will give us the most batshit crazy opinions regarding the internet. This week, a panel on the Third Circuit\u00a0ruled that a lower court was mistaken<\/a>\u00a0in dismissing a case against TikTok on Section 230 grounds.<\/p>\n

But, in order to do so, the court had to intentionally reject a very long list of prior caselaw on Section 230, misread some Supreme Court precedent, and (trifecta!) misread Section 230 itself. This may be one of the worst Circuit Court opinions I\u2019ve read in a long time. It\u2019s definitely way up the list.<\/p>\n

The implications are staggering if this ruling stands. We just talked about some cases in the Ninth Circuit that poke some\u00a0annoying and worrisome holes<\/a>\u00a0in Section 230, but this ruling takes a wrecking ball to 230. It basically upends the entire law.<\/p>\n

At issue are the recommendations TikTok offers on its \u201cFor You Page\u201d (FYP), which is the algorithmically recommended feed that a user sees. According to the plaintiff, the FYP recommended a \u201cBlackout Challenge\u201d video to a ten-year-old child, who mimicked what was shown and died. This is, of course, horrifying. But who is to blame?<\/p>\n

We have some caselaw on this kind of thing even outside of the internet context. In\u00a0Winter v. GP Putnam\u2019s Sons<\/a>, it was found that the publisher of an encyclopedia of mushrooms was not liable for \u201cmushroom enthusiasts who became severely ill from picking and eating mushrooms after relying on information\u201d in the book. The information turned out to be wrong, but the court held that the publisher could not be held liable for those harms because it had no duty to carefully investigate each entry.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Section 230 was designed to\u00a0speed up this analysis<\/a>\u00a0in the internet era, by making it explicit that a website publisher has no liability for harms that come from content posted by others, even if the publisher engaged in traditional publishing functions. Indeed, the point of Section 230 was to encourage platforms to engage in traditional publishing functions.<\/p>\n

There is a long list of cases that say that Section 230 should apply here. But the panel on the Third Circuit says it can ignore all of those. There\u2019s a very long footnote (footnote 13) that literally stretches across three pages of the ruling listing out all of the cases that say this is wrong:<\/p>\n

We recognize that this holding may be in tension with Green v. America Online (AOL), where we held that \u00a7 230 immunized an ICS from any liability for the platform\u2019s failure to prevent certain users from \u201ctransmit[ing] harmful online messages\u201d to other users. 318 F.3d 465, 468 (3d Cir. 2003). We reached this conclusion on the grounds that \u00a7 230 \u201cbar[red] \u2018lawsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for . . . deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone, or alter content.\u2019\u201d Id. at 471 (quoting Zeran v. Am. Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327, 330 (4th Cir. 1997)). Green, however, did not involve an ICS\u2019s content recommendations via an algorithm and pre-dated NetChoice. Similarly, our holding may depart from the pre-NetChoice views of other circuits. See, e.g., Dyroff v. Ultimate Software Grp., 934 F.3d 1093, 1098 (9th Cir. 2019) (\u201c[R]ecommendations and notifications . . . are not content in and of themselves.\u201d); Force v. Facebook, Inc., 934 F.3d 53, 70 (2d Cir. 2019) (\u201cMerely arranging and displaying others\u2019 content to users . . . through [] algorithms\u2014even if the content is not actively sought by those users\u2014is not enough to hold [a defendant platform] responsible as the developer or creator of that content.\u201d (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); Jane Doe No. 1 v.\u00a0Backpage.com<\/a>, LLC, 817 F.3d 12, 21 (1st Cir. 2016) (concluding that \u00a7 230 immunity applied because the structure and operation of the website, notwithstanding that it effectively aided sex traffickers, reflected editorial choices related to traditional publisher functions); Jones v. Dirty World Ent. Recordings LLC, 755 F.3d 398, 407 (6th Cir. 2014) (adopting Zeran by noting that \u201ctraditional editorial functions\u201d are immunized by \u00a7 230); Klayman v. Zuckerburg, 753 F.3d 1354, 1359 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (immunizing a platform\u2019s \u201cdecision whether to print or retract a given piece of content\u201d); Johnson v. Arden, 614 F.3d 785, 791-92 (8th Cir. 2010) (adopting Zeran); Doe v. MySpace, Inc., 528 F.3d 413, 420 (5th Cir. 2008) (rejecting an argument that \u00a7 230 immunity was defeated where the allegations went to the platform\u2019s traditional editorial functions).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I may not be a judge (or even a lawyer), but even I might think that if you\u2019re ruling on something and you have to spend a footnote that stretches across three pages listing all the rulings that disagree with you, at some point, you take a step back and ask:<\/p>\n

\n
\"Principal<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As you might be able to tell from that awful footnote, the Court here seems to think that the ruling in\u00a0Moody v. NetChoice<\/a>\u00a0has basically overturned those rulings and opened up a clean slate. This is\u2026 wrong. I mean, there\u2019s no two ways about it.\u00a0Nothing in Moody says this<\/a>. But the panel here is somehow convinced that it does?<\/p>\n

The reasoning here is absolutely stupid. It\u2019s taking the obviously correct point that the First Amendment protects editorial decision-making, and saying that means that editorial decision-making is \u201cfirst-party speech.\u201d And then it\u2019s making that argument even dumber. Remember, Section 230 protects an interactive computer service or user from being treated as the publisher (for liability purposes) of third party information. But, according to this very, very, very wrong analysis, algorithmic recommendations are magically \u201cfirst-party speech\u201d\u00a0because<\/em>\u00a0they\u2019re protected by the First Amendment:<\/p>\n

Anderson asserts that TikTok\u2019s algorithm \u201camalgamat[es] [] third-party videos,\u201d which results in \u201can expressive product\u201d that \u201ccommunicates to users . . . that the curated stream of videos will be interesting to them[.]\u201d ECF No. 50 at 5. The Supreme Court\u2019s recent discussion about algorithms, albeit in the First Amendment context, supports this view. In Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, the Court considered whether state laws that \u201crestrict the ability of social media platforms to control whether and how third-party posts are presented to other users\u201d run afoul of the First Amendment. 144 S. Ct. 2383, 2393 (2024). The Court held that a platform\u2019s algorithm that reflects \u201ceditorial judgments\u201d about \u201ccompiling the third-party speech it wants in the way it wants\u201d is the platform\u2019s own \u201cexpressive product\u201d and is therefore protected by the First Amendment\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

Given the Supreme Court\u2019s observations that platforms engage in protected first-party speech under the First Amendment when they curate compilations of others\u2019 content via their expressive algorithms, id. at 2409, it follows that doing so amounts to first-party speech under \u00a7 230, too\u2026.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is just flat out wrong. It is based on the false belief that any \u201cexpressive product\u201d makes it \u201cfirst-party speech.\u201d That\u2019s wrong on the law and it\u2019s wrong on the precedent.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bastardization of an already wrong argument put forth by MAGA fools that Section 230 conflicts with the argument in Moody. The argument, as hinted at by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, is that because NetChoice argues (correctly) that its editorial decision-making is protected by the First Amendment, it\u2019s somehow in conflict with the idea that they have no legal liability for third-party speech.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s only in conflict if you can\u2019t read and\/or don\u2019t understand the First Amendment and Section 230 and how they interact. The First Amendment still protects any editorial actions taken by a platform. All Section 230 does is say that it can\u2019t face liability for third party speech, even if it engaged in publishing that speech. The two things are in perfect harmony. Except to these judges in the Third Circuit.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court at no point says that editorial actions turn into first-party speech because they are protected by the First Amendment, contrary to what they say here. That\u2019s never been true, as even the mushroom encyclopedia example shows above.<\/p>\n

Indeed, reading Section 230 in this manner wipes out Section 230. It makes it the opposite of what the law was intended to do. Remember, the law was written in response to the ruling in\u00a0Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy<\/a>, where a local judge found Prodigy liable for content it didn\u2019t moderate, because it did moderate some content. As then Reps. Chris Cox and Ron Wyden recognized, that would encourage no moderation at all, which made no sense. So they passed 230 to overturn that decision and make it so that internet services could feel free to\u00a0engage in all sorts of publishing activity<\/em>\u00a0without facing liability for the underlying content when that content was provided by a third party.<\/p>\n

But here, the Third Circuit has flipped that on its head and said that the second you engage in First Amendment-protected publishing activity around content (such as recommending it), you lose Section 230 protections because the content becomes first-party content.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u2026 the same thing that the court ruled in Stratton Oakmont, and which 230\u00a0overturned<\/em>. It\u2019s beyond ridiculous for the Court to say that Section 230 basically enshrined Stratton Oakmont, and it\u2019s only now realizing that 28 years after the law passed.<\/p>\n

And yet, that seems to be the conclusion of the panel.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, Judge Paul Matey (a FedSoc favorite Trump appointee) has a concurrence\/dissent where he would go even further in destroying Section 230. He falsely claims that 230 only applies to \u201chosting\u201d content, not recommending it. This is literally wrong. He also falsely claims that Section 230 is a form of a \u201ccommon carriage regulation\u201d which it is not.<\/p>\n

So he argues that the first Section 230 case, the Fourth Circuit\u2019s important\u00a0Zeran ruling<\/a>, was decided incorrectly. The Zeran ruling established that Section 230 protected internet services from all kinds of liability for third-party content. Zeran has been adopted by most other circuits (as noted in that footnote of \u201call the cases we\u2019re going to ignore\u201d above). So in Judge Matey\u2019s world, he would roll back Section 230 to only protect hosting of content and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what the authors of the law meant (they\u2019ve told us, repeatedly, that the Zeran ruling was correct).<\/p>\n

Either way, every part of this ruling is bad. It basically overturns Section 230 for an awful lot of publisher activity. I would imagine (hope?) that TikTok will request an en banc rehearing across all judges on the circuit and that the entire Third Circuit agrees to do so. At the very least, that would provide a chance for amici to explain how utterly backwards and confused this ruling is.<\/p>\n

If not, then you have to think the Supreme Court might take it up, given that (1) they still seem to be itching for direct Section 230 cases and (2) this ruling basically calls out in that one footnote that it\u2019s going to disagree with most other Circuits.<\/p>\n

Third Circuit\u2019s Section 230 TikTok Ruling Deliberately Ignores Precedent, Defies Logic<\/a><\/p>\n

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From the that’s-not-how-any-of-this-works dept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":363012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1636,7],"class_list":["post-30821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-section-230","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThird Circuit\u2019s Section 230 TikTok Ruling Deliberately Ignores Precedent, Defies Logic - Above The Law's Legal Tech Non-Event<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2024\/08\/30\/third-circuits-section-230-tiktok-ruling-deliberately-ignores-precedent-defies-logic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Third Circuit\u2019s Section 230 TikTok Ruling Deliberately Ignores Precedent, Defies Logic - 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