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First Amendment · Section 230 · AI Liability Nerdy Skynet! May 26, 2026 |
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Coverage: 2026-05-19 through 2026-05-26 · 4 new developments this period |
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Techdirt |
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Hey Platforms: Add TAKE IT DOWN To Your Transparency Reports Techdirt · 2026-05-20 CommentaryThis post analyzes the TAKE IT DOWN Act's (TIDA) implementation deadline, examining the statute's notice-and-takedown requirements for nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) — including AI-generated deepfakes — as applied to online platforms. The author raises First Amendment concerns about the law's duplicate-removal mandate, lack of counter-notice or appeal procedures, and absence of penalties for bad-faith takedown requests, arguing these features incentivize over-removal of protected speech. The piece also highlights the FTC's enforcement role and the law's intersection with AI-generated NCII, touching on both platform regulatory compliance and speech-protective concerns that bear directly on the newsletter's coverage of government regulation of platform content moderation. Key point: TIDA's 48-hour takedown mandate, combined with no counter-notice process, no bad-faith penalties, and FTC enforcement power, creates a structural incentive for platforms to over-remove potentially protected speech — raising serious First Amendment concerns the author flags as underexplored in the legislative record. |
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Eric Goldman (Technology & Marketing Law Blog) |
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The YOLO Remand Shows Why the 9th Circuit Should Stop Carving Up Section 230–Bride v. Snap Eric Goldman (Technology & Marketing Law Blog) · 2026-05-21 CommentaryGoldman analyzes the remand of *Bride v. YOLO/Snap*, in which the district court twice rejected a default judgment against the defaulted defendant YOLO, finding that the "promises" underlying the Ninth Circuit's promise-based §230 carve-out were never enforceable promises and that the claims were substantively meritless—exposing the practical futility of the Ninth Circuit's prior ruling that §230 does not apply to promise-based claims. The post also flags the district court's First Amendment concern that reviewing platform content moderation decisions could intrude on protected editorial discretion, connecting this case to the broader social media addiction litigation landscape. The piece argues that the Ninth Circuit's recurring practice of carving exceptions into §230 produces litigation that harms no one, benefits no one, and yields no viable claims. Key point: The district court's inability to enter even an unopposed default judgment illustrates that the Ninth Circuit's promise-based §230 exception—recognizing liability for platform safety statements that were never actual enforceable promises—collapses under scrutiny and undermines §230's core immunity without producing any cognizable plaintiff remedy. |
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Tech Policy Press |
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Lawsuits Exposed How Chatbots Endanger Children. Can the Senate's New Bills Fix It? Tech Policy Press · 2026-05-21 CommentaryThis post examines how litigation against AI chatbot companies (most likely including Character.AI and similar platforms) has revealed the dangers these systems pose to minors, and evaluates whether proposed Senate legislation can address those harms. It sits at the intersection of AI product liability doctrine — specifically the Garcia v. Character Technologies line of cases — and emerging legislative responses, making it directly relevant to the newsletter's tracking of AI developer civil liability and the regulatory frameworks being proposed in response. The post likely addresses how lawsuits have shaped the legislative conversation around chatbot design defects, failure-to-warn theories, and child safety obligations for AI developers. Key point: Litigation exposing AI chatbot dangers to children is now driving federal legislative proposals, raising questions about whether statutory fixes will alter or supersede the tort liability framework being developed in cases like Garcia v. Character Technologies. |
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Eric Goldman (Technology & Marketing Law Blog) |
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Section 230 Ends Lawsuit by Twitter Premium Subscriber–Taddeo-Waite v. X Eric Goldman (Technology & Marketing Law Blog) · 2026-05-23 CommentaryA Texas federal court granted Section 230 immunity to X Corp. on three distinct claims: (1) failure to remove a third-party post, (2) algorithmic amplification of that post, and (3) alleged suppression of the plaintiff's own posts despite his paid subscription. The court's algorithmic amplification ruling squarely rejects "algorithmic exceptionalism," holding that encoding human editorial judgment into automated systems does not strip a platform of § 230 immunity — directly engaging the open Gonzalez question. Goldman also flags a circuit-conflict dimension: the court declined to apply the Ninth Circuit's Calise/YOLO framework treating enforceable contractual promises as potential § 230 exceptions, illustrating ongoing lower-court divergence on the Barnes v. Yahoo promissory-estoppel issue. Key point: The court's holding that algorithmic amplification of third-party content is immune publisher activity under § 230 — regardless of whether curation is human or machine-encoded — represents a significant rejection of algorithmic exceptionalism and directly bears on the unresolved Gonzalez question about recommendation-algorithm immunity. |
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Sources: CourtListener API ·
All 13 federal circuit RSS feeds ·
All 50 state supreme courts + intermediate appellate courts (8 states)
via Justia ·
Eric Goldman · Techdirt |