UPDATE: On October 13, 2020, the Supreme Court denied Malwarebytes’ petition for a writ of certiorari asking the Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision which had derived an implied exception to CDA Section 230(c)(2)(B) “Good Samaritan” immunity for blocking or filtering decisions when they are alleged to be “driven by anticompetitive animus.”
The most typical case that implicates Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) involves a provider that hosts content and a third party plaintiff seeking to have content removed. Last month, in a less typical case, a New York district court magistrate dismissed, with prejudice, discrimination and related claims against video-sharing website Vimeo, Inc. (“Vimeo”) based on Vimeo’s termination of a user account for posting objectionable videos. (Domen v. Vimeo, Inc., No. 19-08418 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2020)).