Moderating content is explicitly protected by the text of Section 230(c)(2)(a):
"(2)Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or"
Algorithmic ranking, curation, and promotion are not.
The text of the Third Circuit decision explicitly distinguishes between algorithms that respond to user input -- such as by surfacing content that was previously searched for, or favorited, or followed. Allowing users to filter content by time, upvotes, number of replies etc would be fine.
The FYP algorithm that's contested in the case surfaced the video to the minor without her searching for that topic, following any specific content creator, or positively interacting (liking/favoriting/upvoting) with previous instances of said content. It was fed to her based on a combination of what TikTok knew about her demographic information, what was trending on the platform, and TikTok's editorial secret sauce. TikTok's algorithm made an active decision to surface this content to her, despite knowing that other children had died from similar challenge videos, they promoted it and should be liable for that promotion.
remich|1 year ago
"(2)Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or"
Algorithmic ranking, curation, and promotion are not.
bitshiftfaced|1 year ago
remich|1 year ago
The FYP algorithm that's contested in the case surfaced the video to the minor without her searching for that topic, following any specific content creator, or positively interacting (liking/favoriting/upvoting) with previous instances of said content. It was fed to her based on a combination of what TikTok knew about her demographic information, what was trending on the platform, and TikTok's editorial secret sauce. TikTok's algorithm made an active decision to surface this content to her, despite knowing that other children had died from similar challenge videos, they promoted it and should be liable for that promotion.