Ninth Circuit Panel Goes Out of Its Way to Question Section 230–Doe v. Meta

[I’ve been sitting on this ruling for almost a month because blog posts like this are time-consuming and emotionally draining to write. It may not look it, but this post took about 6 hours to write.] This case involves a terrible tragedy: genocidal violent attacks on the Rohingya minority in Myanmar at the beginning of the 2010s. The plaintiffs sued Facebook for its role in the attacks, such as its alleged algorithmic turbocharging of rage content posted by its users. Despite the tragedy, the facts sound like a straightforward Section 230 situation. However, the lower court didn’t rely on Section 230 to dismiss the complaint. Indeed, Section 230 isn’t mentioned a single time in the district court dismissal, part of why I never blogged that opinion. Instead, the district court dismissed the case solely on statute of limitations grounds (“the Court determines plaintiffs’ claims, having been brought in 2021, were filed outside the applicable two-year statute of limitations”) without…