BURSTSection 230 has so far failed to shield Meta and TikTok owner ByteDance from a lawsuit raised by a mother who alleged that her son's wrongful death followed a flood of "subway surfing" videos platforms intentionally targeted to teens in New York.
In a decision Monday, New York State Supreme Court Judge Paul Goetz largely denied social media companies' motions to dismiss claims they argued should be barred under Section 230 and the First Amendment. Goetz said that the mother, Norma Nazario, had adequately alleged that subway surfing content "was purposefully fed" to her son Zackery "because of his age" and "not because of any user inputs that indicated he was interested in seeing such content."
Unlike other Section 230 cases in which platforms' algorithms were determined to be content-neutral, Goetz wrote that in this case, "it is plausible that the social media defendants’ role exceeded that of neutral assistance in promoting content and constituted active identification of users who would be most impacted by the content."