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COMP 491/492

Dickinson College Computer Science Senior Seminar

RD18 - Social Media Liability

Preparation

Review the expectations for preparation for the Readings and Class Discussions.

Assigned Readings

NOTE: This is a very current topic with the news of these decisions breaking yesterday. Thus, due to time constraints I am relying (mostly) on resporting by a single source (New York Times Reporting) to provide us with a foundation for the discussion. If you read other sources that address the same story I encourage you to read those sources instead and bring those differing perspectives to the class discussion.

To access these articles:

  1. Log into Teams
  2. Then click the links below to access the articles.

Cases

There were three major legal verdicts related to social media issued this week.

  1. Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial
  2. Supreme Court Sides with Internet Provider in Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music
  3. Meta Ordered to Pay $375 Million Over Child Safety Violations

Foundations

The decisions in those cases rested on a variety foundations, existing laws, legal precedent, free speach and medical definitions. The following articles provide the basics for understanding those foundations.

  1. Legal Shield for Websites is Targeted by Lawmakers
  2. Supreme Court to Decide How the First Amendment Applies to Social Media
  3. Taking on Big Tobacco
  4. What is Addition

Discussion Questions

Be prepared to discuss the following questions for each of the three cases that you read about:

  1. What was the plaintiff’s claim?
  2. What were the major points in the plantiff’s argumentt and on which foundational issues / preceidents were they based?
  3. What wee the major counter points in the defense’s arugment and on which foundational issues / preceidents were they based?
  4. In what ways do you agree or disagree with the decision that was made by the court or jury and why?
    • Feel free to do any additional research that you need in order to develop a resonable opinion.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License All textual materials used in this course are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

GPL V3 or Later All executable code used in this course is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3 or later