Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.

Anti-Social Media Lawsuits Are Coming for Roblox and Discord

The Verge reported:

Roblox and Discord are among the platforms sued for allegedly harming children and teens in a new lawsuit. The suit, which also targets Meta’s Facebook platform and Snap’s Snapchat, alleges that the companies’ services “contain unique product features which are intended to and do encourage addiction, and unlawful content and use of said products, to the detriment of their minor users.”

Filed in California state court, the suit is one of many brought against large social media companies. But comparatively few of these have covered Discord and Roblox, both of which are popular with young users. (Over half of U.S. children were on Roblox as of 2020.)

It comes shortly after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring sites to change how they treat users under 18 and follows a U.K. coroner directly blaming social media for a teenager’s suicide, albeit not in a way that carries clear legal consequences.

The Social Media Victims Law Center filed the suit on behalf of a 13-year-old girl identified as S.U., who began using Roblox around age 9. S.U. was allegedly contacted on Roblox by an 18-year-old user who encouraged her to join him on Discord, Instagram, and Snapchat.

The suit claims the communication led to a “harmful and problematic dependence” on electronic devices that damaged her mental health, while the 18-year-old encouraged S.U. to drink, send explicit photos, and engage in other harmful behavior. In 2020, S.U. allegedly attempted suicide.

More Former Bristol Myers Employees Sue Over COVID Vaccination Brouhaha

FiercePharma reported:

Four former Bristol Myers Squibb employees who were fired by the company for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 have filed a lawsuit against the drug giant.

The employees allege that BMS violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which requires companies to engage employees in a dialogue to resolve issues when religious beliefs conflict with company policies.

“This case is not about whether private companies, like defendant BMS, can impose vaccine mandates. They can,” says the complaint, which the plaintiffs filed in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey. “Any private or government vaccine mandate must still comply with state and federal law regarding exemptions.”

The employees join four others who sued BMS last December in federal court in Manhattan. Those plaintiffs also claimed the company wrongfully denied their requests for religious exemptions.

Biden Hands Pandemic Policy Opponents Leg up in Legal Disputes

Bloomberg Law reported:

President Joe Biden’s litigation opponents are seizing on his remark that the pandemic is “over” as they challenge policies adopted in response to the public health crisis.

Litigants say Biden’s remark bolsters their argument that the administration is using the pandemic purely to service his political agenda.

“It is a huge game changer for all of us,” said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the Liberty Justice Center. The group represented parties in cases challenging the vaccine mandate for private sector workers, which the Supreme Court blocked in January, and the vaccine mandate for Head Start teachers, which a federal judge in Louisiana permanently blocked in 24 states on Sept. 21.

The government has been arguing judges need to defer to its public health judgment in these and other cases and Suhr said “that’s just no longer true if the president is saying the pandemic is over.”

Three Reasons Washington Is Freaking out About Elon Musk Right Now

Politico reported:

Elon Musk’s expected takeover of Twitter has Washington holding its breath.

If the world’s richest man reinstates Donald Trump — along with other controversial politicians banned for rules violations — Republican campaign managers could again find their days wrecked by Tweet-driven headaches.

Or Musk, who says he’s a “free speech absolutist,” could end up scaring off users — and invite a wave of litigation — if he does away with the platform’s efforts to weed out disinformation, racism and other vitriol.

“If they say something that is illegal or otherwise just destructive to the world — then there should be perhaps a timeout, a temporary suspension. … But I think permabans just fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter,” Musk has said in the past.

Sen. Bill Cassidy Says Soldiers Should Not Be Kicked out of Military for Refusing COVID Vaccine

Fox News reported:

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said Wednesday on “The Brian Kilmeade Show” the military is “ignoring the best science” by kicking out service members for refusing the coronavirus vaccine.

“No, we should not [discharge them] and the reason I base that as a physician is that we know the previous exposure works like a vaccine. Eighty percent of those folks statistically have been previously exposed to COVID. Eighty percent of those people are now immune not because they’ve been vaccinated, but because they’ve been exposed,” he said.

“And probably in that age group, it may be close to 100%. If you want to follow the science, you would say the question here is immunity, not vaccination. And if they’re immune, they should be allowed to stay no matter what else you think. They’re kind of ignoring the best science.”

World Cup 2022: No Vaccine Requirement, but Regular COVID Testing Recommended for Players

Yahoo!Sports reported:

Men’s World Cup organizers have requested that players undergo COVID-19 tests every two days while in Qatar for the 2022 tournament, sources familiar with recent guidance distributed to teams told Yahoo Sports.

Players will not have to be vaccinated, nor will they have to quarantine upon arrival, according to the guidance and a Qatari document. And they will not be subject to draconian restrictions on movement like athletes were at the Tokyo or Beijing Olympics in 2021 and earlier this year. But they will be “encouraged” by organizers to wear masks while in crowded areas, and perhaps subject to measures implemented by individual teams to prevent outbreaks.

The every-other-day testing cadence is a recommendation, not a requirement, sources said. It is also subject to change, depending on the state of the pandemic at the time of the World Cup, which begins Nov. 20. But a Qatar Ministry of Public Health document leaves room for the possibility of a testing requirement, and speaks about the arranging of rapid antigen tests at team hotels “when required.”

The document also states that a confirmed COVID case will require five days of isolation, with players released on Day 6 if they are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

Zero-COVID Measures Cause Chaos as China Prepares for Beijing Summit

The Guardian reported:

Lockdowns and travel restrictions are continuing to cause chaos across China in the run-up to a crucial political meeting next week as the government holds fast to hardline zero-COVID policies.

As thousands of Communist party delegates prepare to descend on Beijing for the twice-a-decade congress meeting, where Xi Jinping is expected to start his third term as leader, local authorities are under pressure to control and contain outbreaks. This week 2,883 cases were reported across more than 25 provinces, including 227 on Wednesday. The number is small compared with global cases but relatively high for China’s zero-tolerance approach.

China’s government has remained committed to its zero-COVID policy, despite major damage to the economy and growing opposition from the general public to frequent sudden lockdowns that trap people inside their homes, shops and workplaces, and other overzealous reactions to handfuls of cases.

‘Big Tech Never Loses a Legislative Fight — and They Just Did’ as Package of New Bills Passes

CNBC reported:

Policy advocates who have been pushing for new legislation reining in Big Tech’s power have seen their hopes lifted and shattered several times throughout the past few months.

Last week marked one of the brighter notes for those supporting the push for new antitrust laws, when the House passed a package of bills giving enforcers more resources to go after anti-competitive mergers and giving state attorneys general more power over in which courts they can bring antitrust lawsuits.

While the legislation that passed 242-184 is less ambitious in scope than some of the more sweeping proposals making their way through both chambers of Congress, it is cause for hope, according to a new memo from the Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit that advocates for antitrust reform.

Government Efforts to Censor Social Media Should Be Transparent

Forbes reported:

Last week, the conservative news site Just the News reported that government agencies were outsourcing their attempts to censor social media to a private consortium. While this story feeds into conservative paranoia about bias against conservative groups, it also raises important issues of improper attempts by government agencies to circumvent free speech constraints. It suggests, at a minimum, the need for a regime of transparency and disclosure to prevent mission creep and political manipulation.

The private sector group involved, a consortium called the Election Integrity Partnership, included the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and social media analytics firm Graphika.

This consortium of serious and responsible organizations worked with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to pass on to social media companies certain posts they considered election misinformation during the 2020 election.

Social media platforms could take action or not when they received these referrals. But the platforms apparently took action about a third of the time, according to the group’s report on the 2020 effort. The group is getting the band back together for the 2022 election. Just the News alleged that this public-private partnership is a thinly veiled attempt to evade First Amendment restrictions on government censorship and compared it to the now discredited and discontinued Disinformation Governance Board.

Disinformation in Spanish Is Prolific on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Despite Vows to Act

The Guardian reported:

Last year, U.S. lawmakers urged the CEOs of major tech companies including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to do more to combat disinformation spreading in Spanish, warning that inaccurate information on key issues such as vaccines and the presidential election was proliferating on their platforms.

“There is significant evidence that your Spanish-language moderation efforts are not keeping pace, with widespread accounts of viral content promoting human smuggling, vaccine hoaxes and election misinformation,” the lawmakers wrote in a July 2021 letter.

“Congress has a moral duty to ensure that all social media users have the same access to truthful and trustworthy content regardless of the language they speak at home or use to communicate online.”

More than a year later, and with the midterm elections fast approaching, advocates say these social media platforms are still falling short on policing such content — particularly when it comes to non-English languages.