US court focuses on TikTok algorithm
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APA/Reuters
NFollowing a potentially groundbreaking ruling for the entire internet industry, TikTok must answer for the death of a ten-year-old user in the USA. An appeals court allowed a corresponding lawsuit against the short video platform on Tuesday (local time) because it reinterpreted a law.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects internet companies from being held accountable for content uploaded by users. However, this does not apply to the algorithms that recommend certain content to users, wrote Judge Patty Shwartz in her ruling. Although this interpretation is a departure from previous case law, it is based on a ruling by the US Supreme Court on content moderation in online networks from July 2024.
According to the US Supreme Court, a platform’s recommendation algorithm reflects “editorial decisions” about “compiling the third-party contributions it wants in the manner it wants.” According to this logic, the curation of content is an expression of the company itself that does not fall under Section 230. “TikTok makes decisions about the content that is recommended and promoted to certain users and thus exercises its own expression of opinion.” TikTok was initially unavailable for comment.
“The big tech companies just lost their ‘get out of jail free’ card,” said Jeffrey Goodman, the lawyer for the mother of the deceased ten-year-old. She died in 2021 as part of the so-called “Blackout Challenge,” in which users film themselves suffocating until they pass out. The ten-year-old had strangled herself with her mother’s handbag strap.
2024-08-28 20:26:06