From LawAndCrime.com….
A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not immunize Snapchat from a lawsuit claiming that its “Speed Filter” contributed to the deaths of two boys who died in a car crash while using the app to record themselves going 123 mph.
The lawsuit was filed by the boys’ surviving parents and alleged that the filter—which essentially functions as a speedometer by capturing a user’s speed within the social media app—was negligently designed and encouraged their children to drive at dangerous speeds.
According to the lawsuit, Jason Davis, 17, Hunter Morby, 17, and Landen Brown, 20, in 2017 were driving at high speeds on Cranberry Road in Wisconsin when the vehicle ran off the road and hit a tree going approximately 113 mph and burst into flames. Just before the crash, Brown had opened the Snapchat Speed Filter on his phone.
Snapchat responded by asserting that the company was protected by Section 230 because the Speed Filter is nothing more than a content creation tool within the platform that requires actual publishing to come from third-party users. In short, the company argued that holding it liable for creating the filter would in effect be making it liable for third-party content in violation of the law.
