WASHINGTON, D.C. – On July 22, the District Court for the District of Utah issued an opinion in NetChoice v. Reyes, in which NetChoice challenged the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act, arguing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act preempted some of the act’s provisions.
Lawmakers around the country are increasingly concerned about the harms wrought by social media platforms, particularly on children. The way products are designed and data is used impacts our daily interaction with these technologies, which affect mental and physical health and lead to the spread of mis- and disinformation and hate. Because the First Amendment limits the ability of governments to demand platforms enact specific content moderation policies, laws aimed at product design can help improve consumer safety at scale and are more likely to withstand constitutional challenge.
Utah’s law requires social media companies to ascertain their users’ ages, limit the ability of minors to share content, and impose restrictions on data collection and use. The law also requires platforms to disable three features: autoplay functions that continuously play content without user interaction, scroll or pagination that loads additional content as long as the user keeps scrolling, and push notifications prompting repeated user engagement. NetChoice had asked the Court to declare that section 230 preempted Utah’s regulations that these features be disabled.
The court declined to do so, finding the potential liability for those features had no connection to content. The court held NetChoice’s broad argument that section 230 immunizes platforms from any liability for design decisions “unmoored from the plain text of section 230 and unsupported by the case law. . .”
TJLP Executive Director Meetali Jain stated:
“Utah has demonstrated leadership in adopting thoughtful laws to protect children from the well-documented harms associated with their use of social media. We’re pleased the court saw through the tech industry’s spurious section 230 arguments and urge the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm the district court’s decision.