Two more lawsuits were filed Tuesday against social media companies over their platforms’ alleged roles in rising mental health disorders among U.S. youth. Some 70 similar actions have been transferred and assigned to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California in Oakland since October.
Rebecca Day
Rebecca Day, Senior editor, joined Warren Communications News in 2010. She’s a longtime CE industry veteran who has also written about consumer tech for Popular Mechanics, Residential Tech Today, CE Pro and others. You can follow Day on Instagram and Twitter: @rebday
SaurikIT’s December 2020 antitrust complaint against Apple for its alleged illegal monopoly of software distribution on its App Store is “hopelessly time-barred,” said Apple’s Monday appellee brief (docket 22-16527) in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Powerful social media companies that yield “unmatched, highly concentrated technology in pursuit of profit” are knowingly creating an “unprecedented mental health crisis,” alleged the San Mateo County Board of Education in a Monday complaint (docket 3:23-cv-1108) against Google, Snap and TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. A similar suit was filed last week in Oakland (see 2303100049).
The court should deny DOJ’s motion to strike and reject its request for “an extraordinary 65-day extension” intended to delay “the inevitable reckoning for the federal government’s indefensible misconduct,” said the attorneys general for Louisiana and Missouri in a memorandum (docket 3:22-cv-01213) in U.S District Court for Louisiana in Monroe, opposing DOJ’s motion to strike their proposed findings of fact in a First Amendment social media case.
Hair color products company Madison Reed lacks a publicly available written policy showing a retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying biometric identifiers and information used for its virtual try-on feature, alleged a Friday privacy class action (docket 4:23-cv-4039) in U.S. District Court for Central Illinois in Rock Island.
Defendant X Wireless filed a motion to dismiss (docket 1:23-cv-20848) a two-count collections action filed against it in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami by Nu-Era Telecom. X Wireless asked the court to abstain from exercising jurisdiction, citing a an earlier-filed, parallel proceeding it filed against Nu-Era and Jordan Hantman, an X Wireless employee, in Maryland state court.
SimpliSafe relies on “consumer confusion” in the illegal automatic renewal scheme used for its security system’s subscription monitoring service, alleged a Wednesday class action (docket 2:23-cv-433) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento.
Safe and healthy social media use by youth “lies in stark contrast with the deliberate design of algorithms” that flood kids with “divisive and harmful” content, alleged a Thursday class action (docket 4:23-cv-01061) brought by the Broward County, Florida, School Board against Facebook, TikTok, Google and Snap in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.
Sage Telecom’s allegations that Halsted Financial Service violated the Texas Business & Commercial Code are speculative and insufficient to state a claim, said the defendant’s Wednesday motion to dismiss (see 2303020063) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas (docket 3:23-cv-00463).
Lumen executives misrepresented to investors and the public the company’s rate of investment and progress in expanding fiber services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and residential markets, alleged a March 3 class action (docket 3:23-cv-00286) filed in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Monroe.