A lawsuit in California can proceed against Twitter by two young men who say
the site was slow to remove explicit materials showing them when they were
underage.
A federal judge dismissed several claims against Twitter on Thursday. Yet he
ruled that a legal shield for internet platforms didn't bar a suit under a
law designed to penalize those who benefit from sex trafficking — in a rare
decision on the impact of recent carveouts to the shield.
Twitter and other social media sites rely on that provision, known as Sec.
230, to exit from all kinds of lawsuits over user content. But in 2018,
Congress enacted changes, known as FOSTA, that opened the door to suits
under the trafficking law.
"No tech company should be allowed to profit from and outright ignore child
sexual abuse material," said Peter Gentala, senior legal counsel for the
National Center on Sexual Exploitation and a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
According to their complaint, the two boys, known only as John Doe #1 and
John Doe #1, were blackmailed into performing sexual acts when they were
approximately 13. Video of them eventually found its way to Twitter, where
it racked up hundreds of thousands of views. In a response to a complaint
from one of the boys, which included his ID, Twitter said it had "reviewed
the content, and didn't find a violation of our policies," although it did
remove the videos a few days later after the intervention of an agent from
the Department of Homeland Security.
Twitter described "mistakes or delays" in applying measures to combat child
exploitation and countered that the carveouts to Sec. 230 allowed lawsuits
only for more knowing and egregious conduct. It also said it did not violate
the underlying trafficking statute.
"We disagree with the Court's ruling and its interpretation of relevant law,
and we strongly deny that Twitter benefited in any way from the activities
alleged in this complaint," a Twitter spokesperson said on Friday, adding
that the company has "heavily invested in technology and tools to
proactively enforce our policy" against child sexual exploitation.
Online platforms say that Sec. 230 ensures free speech while also helping to
clean up the internet because the provision allows sites to remove users'
content without fear of assuming liability themselves. A growing number of
critics, though, say Sec. 230 means companies have too little incentive to
remove the most dangerous and horrific posts online — a position that led in
part to FOSTA.
Yet FOSTA has also proven controversial. Supported by many groups for
victims of trafficking, it passed in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote over
the objection of many tech advocates who said it would squash free speech
while doing little to disrupt trafficking. Although FOSTA has rarely been
invoked in legal actions, the law has also resulted in sites taking down
legal pornography, educational content and measures that sex workers take to
ensure their safety.