Texas Personal Injury Attorney Takes on Big Tech

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for what their users post, is being challenged by Annie McAdams, a personal-injury lawyer from Houston. McAdams accuses Facebook and other tech companies of facilitating the sex trafficking of minors. She argues that when pimps use Facebook and Instagram to lure children into prostitution, separate laws require the social media companies to warn their users and do more to prevent it. She has filed suits in California, Georgia, Missouri and Texas. A Texas judge has repeatedly denied Facebook’s motions to dismiss. Legislation is not expected to significantly weaken Section 230 anytime soon, but plaintiffs’ lawyers are pushing ahead with lawsuits, and after years of court rulings that strengthened the law they have made some progress. In 2016, a federal appeals court ruled that Section 230 didn’t protect a modeling website that two men used to lure women whom they drugged and sexually assaulted, because the site’s owners knew of the threat and  failed to warn the women. A federal appeals court recently affirmed a ruling that Airbnb could be held liable if its users violated home-rental bans in Santa Monica, Calif. McAdams predicts that a jury will award her client billions, and says her arguments are buttressed by Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in front of Congress. She points to 17 references under oath in which he says he is “responsible for content” on Facebook. She argues that her case is about what Facebook didn’t do to protect its users.