June 29, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Facebook cannot invoke a controversial federal liability shield to evade a lawsuit accusing the social media giant of failing to prevent its platform from being used by sex traffickers, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the case concerns teenage trafficking victims who met their pimps via Facebook Messenger and Facebook-owned Instagram.
Their lawsuits accuse Facebook of negligence and product liability on the grounds that the platform offers “a point of first contact between sex traffickers and these children” and “an unrestricted platform to stalk, exploit, recruit, groom, and extort children into the sex trade”; and that the company failed to warn of or prevent their platform being used for sex trafficking, and that Facebook even benefitted from the practice.
Facebook defended itself by invoking Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which exempts internet companies from liability for the content third parties publish on their websites. But the Lone Star State’s highest court rejected that defense, finding that Facebook had violated Texas law and the lawsuits could proceed.
“We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability
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