Thread by @jess_miers

Cal Superior Court just rejected #Section230 in Neville v. Snap Inc., a lawsuit involving users who overdosed on drugs allegedly purchased via Snap.

The Court attributed Snap's role in the deaths to chat app's design permitting ephemeral communications.
nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…

I will share the opinion once I have it.

Keep in mind that this is a state court holding, similar to the order we saw in the California social media addiction lawsuits, so it has limited reach (for now).

With that said, it's a problematic trend that has the potential to reach other privacy-centric designs such as encrypted communication apps.

It seems the state of California should be promoting privacy by design, not thwarting it. But at this point, it's par for the course.

Opinion:

As we've seen before, the Court finds the "dangerous design not third-party content" argument plausible. Nevermind the fact that the issue here arises out of third-party content (i.e. the third-party communication of illicit substances).drive.google.com/file/d/1WNKoHW…

The Court drew an arbitrary distinction between "publishing" the drug sellers' content and Snap's conduct in designing the ephemeral communication platform.

By that logic, any plaintiff can argue that their claim is based on a design that facilitates UGC, not the UGC itself.

There is a dangerous precedent emerging from these sorts of suits --> any design that enables users to communicate and share content online is inherently dangerous.

We're becoming the EU faster than we may think.

@threadreaderapp unroll