🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Prior Section 230 rulings and the scale of California’s consolidated litigation deserve clearer framing

• Earlier legal groundwork should be spelled out, since rulings have already been issued in the California state coordination proceeding and the related federal multidistrict litigation (MDL), a process that centralizes similar lawsuits in one federal court for pretrial proceedings.
• In October 2023, Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Carolyn B. Kuhl was found to have dismissed plaintiffs’ claims that the platforms are liable for defective product design on Section 230 and First Amendment grounds, while negligence per se claims were allowed to move forward 1.
• As a result, a trial is likely to be shaped around fewer legal theories than a broad reading might suggest.
• The size of the case load should also be made concrete, since about 800 cases have been consolidated in the California Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding (JCCP), a California state-court process that groups related cases before one judge 1.

New youth safety laws create a market for compliance-as-a-service tools

• Tech operators and investors can see a sales opening as new rules limit how platforms use algorithms and notifications for minors.
• New York’s SAFE for Kids Act requires social media companies to curb algorithmically personalized addictive feeds and nighttime notifications for users under 18 unless parental consent is granted 2.
• Vendors can sell software development kits (SDKs), prepackaged code developers can plug into apps, plus audit work to help platforms ship minor-safe feeds that pull only from followed accounts in a set order such as chronological order when consent is missing 2.
• The law starts 180 days after final rules are released, which gives vendors a defined runway to build and pitch these tools 2.