Texas Court hold Facebook not Immune
Some good news from the Houston Chronicle.
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On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston woman sues Facebook for aiding in her being sex trafficked as teen:
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday in a Houston case that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s-land” and can be held liable for the conduct of pimps who use its technology to recruit and prey on children.
The ruling came in a trio of Houston civil actions involving teenage trafficking victims who met their abusive pimps through Facebook’s messaging functions. They sued the California-based social media juggernaut for negligence and product liability, saying that Facebook failed to warn about or attempt to prevent sex trafficking from taking place on its internet platforms. The suits also alleged that Facebook benefited from the sexual exploitation of trafficking victims.
The justices said trafficking victims can move forward with lawsuits on the grounds that Facebook violated a provision of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code passed in 2009.
Facebook lawyers argued the company was shielded from liability under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that what users say or write online is not akin to a publisher conveying the same message. Essentially, they said, Facebook is immune to these types of lawsuits.
The majority wrote, “We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking.”
“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”
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My comment: Texas may save the Union.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
