The End of Section 230 Protections?

Section 230 has been a bedrock law shielding large tech platforms from the consequences of their algorithms by pretending these are equivalent to carriage infrastructure — as dumb and straightforward as phone lines.

However, it’s been clear for years to anyone with a lick of sense that the introduction of algorithms — designed and modified by humans to achieve certain ends through selection, amplification, and redaction — transformed these platforms into media companies, with all the attendant legal exposures and obligations.

The courts may finally be catching up to what we’ve understood for years, via a ruling Tuesday from the Third Circuit finding that TikTok’s algorithmic manipulations were culpable in the death of a teen who received promoted content about a “Blackout Challenge” — hanging for a time until you blacked out. The teen died of asphyxiation.