AWFUL

Court Weighs if TikTok Can Be Sued Over ‘Blackout Challenge’ Death

After her 10-year-old daughter died from participating in the challenge in 2021, Tawainna Anderson sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance.

A Philadelphia U.S. appeals court weighed in on Wednesday regarding whether or not TikTok could be sued for causing a young girl’s death by promoting a viral “blackout challenge” that had people choking themselves until they became unconscious, according to NBC News. After her 10 year-old daughter died from participating in the challenge in 2021, Tawainna Anderson sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. A lower court ruled in 2022 that TikTok was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in 1996, but some judges argued that Section 230 has become outdated. “I think we can all probably agree that this technology didn’t exist in the mid-1990s, or didn’t exist as widely deployed as it is now,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Matey.