• by Wendy Davis , 9 hours ago

A group of parents are urging a federal appellate court to revive a lawsuit alleging that Google and TikTok wrongly failed to remove potentially dangerous content, including "choking challenge" videos that depict people strangling themselves until they pass out.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose, California, dismissed the case against the platforms last year, ruling that the platforms were protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes web companies from liability over posts by users.

The parents are now asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to restore their lawsuit, arguing that the claims don't center on the videos themselves, but on the companies' allegedly "defective" tools for reporting videos that violate the companies' content policies.

Counsel for the parents writes that their claims target the platforms' "product design choices and misrepresentations about their reporting tools," as opposed to decisions about whether to publish videos created by users.

The dispute dates to 2023, when parents who alleged their children were harmed as a result of content on the platforms, and the Becca Schmill Foundation -- created by the family of 18-year-old Rebecca Mann Schmill who died of a fentanyl overdose after using social media to obtain drugs -- sued both tech companies.

Parents of two children named in the lawsuit specifically alleged that they died after attempting “choking challenges” they had seen online.

The complaint included claims that Google and TikTok misrepresent that they remove material that violates their content policies, and that the platforms are dangerously defective.

Among other allegations, the plaintiffs -- who described themselves as “modern-day champions and vigilantes" -- said they searched for and reported “choking videos and other harmful videos” to Google's YouTube and TikTok, but that their efforts were “unheeded, ignored, and arbitrarily dismissed” by the platforms.

DeMarchi said in a written order dismissing the case that the claims about the companies' reporting tools actually centered on disputes about the content.

Counsel for the parents is asking the 9th Circuit to reject that finding.

The parents "do not allege injury from the substance or ideas within the videos they reported; they were not at risk of imitating a choking challenge or purchasing illegal drugs," counsel writes in papers filed late last week.

"Their injury is categorically distinct: the defective reporting tools subjected them to friction, confusion, retraumatization, lost time, and futility as they attempted to make the platforms safer for children. That injury flows from a product defect and a misrepresentation -- not from any third-party publication decision."

Google and TikTok are expected to respond to the arguments by June 28.