Karan Lala

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Comment
Volume 91.6
TikTok the Tortfeasor: A Framework to Discuss Social-Platform Externalities and Arguments Favoring Ex Ante Mitigations
Karan Lala
B.S. 2018, University of California, San Diego; J.D. Candidate 2025, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Omri Ben-Shahar and the editors and staff of the University of Chicago Law Review for their thoughtful advice and support.

This Comment reviews Section 230 jurisprudence to develop a novel taxonomy for claims against social media platforms. It divides claims against platforms into three categories—content specific, content dependent, and content agnostic—based on the proximity of the alleged injury to user-generated content and the degree of the platform’s participation. This Comment also formalizes a remedies test that courts can use to distinguish legitimate content-agnostic claims from those in name only. Armed with this vocabulary, this Comment turns its attention to a number of cases pending against social platforms. Applying the remedies test, it determines that a handful of pending allegations give rise to legitimate content-agnostic claims. Noting that content-agnostic injuries are material but not yet fully understood, this Comment ultimately argues that an ex ante regulatory regime operationalized by an expert agency is better suited to address social-platform externalities than an ex post liability regime.