United States

In late 2016 and early 2017, hundreds of strangers began showing up at Matthew Herrick’s home and work in New York City, looking for sex. From The Outline, 

Under current US law, digital services and platforms like Facebook and Twitter are protected from liability for the content that users post to their networks, so they can’t be sued for defamation or libel. From Columbia Journalism Review. 

In a very interesting move that received little attention during the holiday season, Facebook has banned talking about sex on its platform. This includes “dirty talk” and “sexual slang”. From Shear On Social Media Law, Life & Tech.

You may recall that last year, the video hosting website Veoh had a big win when a court ruled that the site was protected by DMCA safe harbors from infringement committed by users. From Techdirt. 

A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits seeking to hold Facebook, Google and Twitter liable to victims of the December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, for letting the Islamic State flourish on their social media platforms. From CNBC.com.

Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, has shown yet again that it does not deserve our trust. From EFF. 

Rep. Johnny Rye(R-Trumann) filed a bill this morning that would allow civil legal action against social media companies that "delete or censor" content posted by users. From Arkansas Times. 

This is another 1-800 LAW FIRM lawsuit against social media providers for allegedly materially supporting terrorists. Like the others, it fails. In light of the Ninth Circuit’s Fields opinion, dismissing a similar suit on proximate cause grounds, this opinion doesn’t break any new ground. From Techn...

Amazon has “failed to provide sufficient answers” about its controversial facial recognition software, Rekognition — and lawmakers won’t take the company’s usual silent treatment for an answer. From TechCrunch. 

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions. From The Guardian.