Subway surfing and the shiny new thing
Do not attempt dangerous and potentially deadly stunts for social media clout. Do not be a fool who dies from his foolishness.
The New York Times reported last December that "subway surfing" - where people ride on top of subway cars for a thrill - has been around for over one hundred years and sharply increased in the 1980's. Many fools have died doing this, and now a grieving mother is suing social media giants for popularizing the trend that was around for decades before social media existed.
As I covered with huffing back in June, social media users took a foolishly dangerous trend that has been around since well before most people today were even born and started posting videos about it. It is not possible for TikTok or Instagram to be responsible for people doing these things before either company existed, or before 99% of people even had access to the Internet at all. We always want to blame the shiny new thing, but the real problem is human nature. We cannot be rid of that as long as we have humans.
Social media companies should be more responsible. TikTok should adjust its algorithm to not show dangerous "challenges," no matter how many views they get. All social media companies should instruct their moderators to remove violent challenges, from "subway surfing" and huffing to the ridiculous "milk crate challenge" that resulted in multiple injuries as people tried to climb unstable surfaces and fell off. There are ways do do that without lawsuits or government regulations, such as pressuring advertisers and investors.
But ultimately, it is not the fault of social media companies that people are hurt or killed doing foolish stunts for social media clout. Yes, teenagers have brains that are not yet fully developed and teenage boys in particular have been prone to do foolish and dangerous things for all of human history. But while there are teens who do these things, there are millions of teenagers who do not get themselves killed doing foolish stunts.
We need to be very careful about holding social media companies liable for user-generated content. Congress was shockingly forward-looking when it crafted Section 230 Communications Decency Act of 1996, recognizing the importance of user-generated content and how not protecting interactive content providers (forums, comment sections and social media) would chill speech. Politicians of both parties hate Section 230 and have been trying to chip away at it for years. They cannot stand the fact that the great unwashed masses have the ability to speak freely without a filter.
The politicians want this lawsuit to succeed, because they want to take away free speech, or at least more strictly regulate what is said. The end goal is not eliminating viral videos that encourage dangerous content, but taking the power of free speech away from the people, because we say things that the politicians do not want people to hear. Extreme cases make bad law, and we must be careful not to set a dangerous precedent that we will regret later.