NEW YORK — After years of being targeted by religious anti-porn organization NCOSE (formerly Morality in Media) for allowing sexual content by third-party uploaders, Reddit has now become the latest defendant in an orchestrated campaign of civil lawsuits attempting to challenge Section 230 protections in the name of protecting “victims of sex trafficking.”
The new lawsuit, filed by attorneys for a pseudonymous Jane Doe, cites FOSTA-SESTA and alleges that Reddit “knowingly benefits from lax enforcement of its content polices, including for child pornography.”
The civil lawsuit was filed last Thursday by class-action specialist attorneys Davida Brook, Krysta Kauble Pachman, Arun Subramanian and Steve Cohen, representing the firms Susman Godfrey LLP and Pollock Cohen LLP.
Like similar lawsuits filed against Facebook and Twitter — and also Pornhub and WGCZ — under NCOSE’s sponsorship, the Reddit lawsuit refers to an illegal video shot and uploaded by a third party that is not part of the lawsuit. Instead, the plaintiff looks for a settlement from large online platforms that supposedly “promoted and monetized” the content.
This is the exact situation that Section 230 was meant to address, shielding platforms from this type of lawsuit. However, in 2017-18, Congress created, with FOSTA-SESTA, a loophole for platform immunity in cases concerning “federal sex trafficking laws.”
The Jane Doe, according to a report by tech site The Verge, "is seeking a class action suit representing anyone who had similar photos or videos posted on Reddit while they were under 18 years of age. She’s accusing Reddit of distributing child pornography, failing to report child sexual abuse material and violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.”
To read the filed lawsuit, click here.