The purchase and sale of a painkiller on Snapchat was dragged into a lawsuit – Mehr News Agency Iran and world’s news

According to Mehr news agency, citing Gizmochina, Snapchat has faced a big legal challenge in the state of California, USA. Snap has been sued by families who claim their children used the app to buy fentanyl (a powerful painkiller), in some cases resulting in fatal overdoses.

The said case is under the supervision of Lawrence Riff, a judge in Los Angeles, and it will probably have a profound effect on the functioning of social networks and making them accountable.

Normally, technology companies such as Snapchat are covered by section 230 of the American Communications Decency Act and enjoy a kind of legal immunity in the new age of the Internet. In this way, platforms can grow without the constant threat of lawsuits over user-generated content.

Nevertheless, the judge of the case has allowed the filing and continuation of the complaint, and this indicates a change in the procedure of dealing with technology companies.

In this case, the content posted by drug dealers is not at issue, but rather Snapchat’s products and business decisions. The lawsuit is part of a growing trend in which tech companies are being scrutinized for their role in public health and safety.

Google, Meta, and TikTok, for example, are now facing complaints about fueling a teen mental health crisis.

In response to the complaint, Snapchat has indicated that it cooperates with law enforcement and uses technology to track illegal activities on its platforms. But there is still one problem, to what extent are social networks responsible for the actions of their users? And where is the line between user protection and content censorship?