The Court of Appeal has reopened proceedings against anonymous messaging service Yolo, which it said broke a promise to expose bullying on the app. In a ruling issued Thursday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should not prevent Yolo from overturning a lower court’s ruling over allegations that it misrepresented its terms of service. But it determined that the app could not be held liable for design flaws that allegedly allowed harassment, leaving in place different parts of the previous ruling.
Yolo, an app that integrates with Snapchat and allows users to send anonymous messages, was hit with a lawsuit after a teenage user died by suicide in 2021. The boy, Carson Braid, received harassing and sexually explicit messages from anonymous users who he believed he might be aware of. Brad and his family tried to contact Yolo for help, but Yolo allegedly never responded, and in some cases, emails sent to the company simply bounced back. Snap banned Yolo and another app targeted by the lawsuit, and a year later it banned all anonymous messaging integrations.
Family says it’s ‘impossible’ for Yolo’s ten employees to oversee the app
Bride’s family and some other aggrieved parents believe Yolo violated legally binding promises to its users. They noted that Yolo claimed in the notice that if people send “harassing messages” to others, they will be banned for inappropriate use and have their anonymity removed. But as the ruling concluded, the plaintiffs argued that “Yolo, with no more than 10 employees, was unable to monitor the traffic of 10 million daily active users to deliver on its promise, and in fact it never did so.” Additionally, , they claim Yolo should have known its anonymity design would promote harassment, making it flawed and dangerous.
A lower court dismissed both charges and said that under Section 230, Yolo could not be held responsible for its users’ posts. The Court of Appeal was more sympathetic. It accepted the argument that Home instead held Yolo accountable for promising users something it couldn’t deliver. “Yolo has repeatedly told users that it will expose and ban users who violate its terms of service. However, it has never done so and probably never intended to do so. One possible solution to the commitment, fundamental obligation.
“Today’s decision does not expand the liability of internet companies or include all violations of their terms of service as actionable claims”
The Yolo lawsuit builds on a previous Ninth Circuit ruling that allowed another Snap-related lawsuit to bypass Section 230 protections. In 2021, it found that Snap could be sued over a “speed filter” that could implicitly encourage users to drive recklessly even if they were responsible for posting using the filter. (The entire case is ongoing.) In addition to misrepresentation, the plaintiffs argued that Yolo’s anonymous messaging feature also poses risks, an argument the Ninth Circuit disagreed with — “We decline to recognize the classification of anonymity as anonymous theory of sex.
This latest ruling is part of a push and pull to expand the scope of Section 230. Some cases have attempted to claim that apps are unlawfully defective if they cause harassment or other harm, even if the harm is caused by the user. Despite the interim victory, it was far from settled principle and the Supreme Court refused to consider it Herrick v. Grindr Back in 2019, the Supreme Court also refused to curtail Section 230 in a case over whether YouTube and Twitter supported illegal terrorism. After the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, Yolo can still raise a defense that it reasonably tried to enforce its user agreement, and the case is not over.
Even so, letting users sue a company for not complying with its content policies could theoretically allow lawsuits to be brought against almost any service that doesn’t practice perfect moderation (often impossible). The Ninth Circuit insisted that’s not what they were doing. “Today’s decision does not expand the liability of Internet companies or include all violations of their terms of service as actionable claims,” Schiller wrote. “We are careful to ensure [Section] With 230 in full force, we must resist the inevitable urge to expand immunity beyond what Congress set, creating unfettered immunity for tech companies.
