US court reopens lawsuit against TikTok over 10-year-old girl's death

A U.S. appeals court has revived a case against TikTok brought by the mother of a 10-year-old girl who died after taking part in the viral Blackout Challenge, which asked users to choke themselves until they passed out, Reuters reports.

Federal law generally shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by users. But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that the law doesn’t bar Nyla Anderson’s mother from suing TikTok over what the court says are the social network’s algorithms that prompted her daughter to accept the challenge.

District Judge Patty Schwartz said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 only shields social media companies from liability for content posted by users, not for recommendations TikTok makes based on its algorithms.

She acknowledged that the decision was a departure from previous rulings by her court and others that Section 230 exempts online platforms from liability for failing to prevent users from transmitting harmful messages.

But she said those arguments no longer apply after the Supreme Court’s July decision. Last month, the high court ruled that the platform’s algorithms reflect “editorial judgments” about “compiling third-party speech that it chooses to present in a manner that [the platform] sees fit.” Schwartz argued that by that logic, the content it selects and organizes using its algorithms is the company’s own speech, which isn’t protected by Section 230.

“TikTok makes decisions about the content it recommends and promotes to specific users, and in doing so, it makes speech on its own behalf,” she wrote.