Meta Wins Section 230 Suit Brought by Hate Crime Victim’s Child

Meta Platforms Inc. and its subsidiaries again avoided a lawsuit challenging its Facebook algorithm.

The plaintiff-minor’s “state law tort claims suffer from a fatal flaw; those claims attack the manner in which Facebook’s algorithm sorts, arranges, and distributes third-party content,” said Judge Barabara M. Keenan of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

The claims are barred under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act “because they seek to hold Facebook liable as a publisher of that third-party content,” Keenan said in a Tuesday opinion, affirming the lower court’s dismissal.

The minor, referred to as M.P., brought ...