A Costco shopper in Mountain View is suffering from vision loss after he was pepper sprayed during an altercation with a right-wing instigator/YouTuber from Southern California.

Richard Maza, 51, a YouTuber and self-proclaimed “First Amendment auditor” from Southern California is accused of creating a confrontation with a shopper at the Mountain View Costco on March 28 and then pepper-spraying him in his car, as the Mountain View Voice Reports. Mountain View police say they received at least four calls around 2 pm about the alleged assault.

Police believe Maza instigated the altercation for financial gain and internet views, as his YouTube channel, “Freedom of the Press,” is part of a network of right-wing content creators who post videos in which they provoke members of the public to lash out at them. This enables the group to claim self-defense and fight back, often using pepper spray, which gets triple the amount of views on YouTube, according to a police report by Mountain View officer Andrew Wong.

Wong wrote in the report that Maza’s videos show him routinely mocking his targets, which Wong said was behavior “not typical of victims who are truly defending themselves.”

“Maza and his group were not merely filming people; they were saying things in an attempt to get them angry by using personal attacks,” Wong wrote.

Canadian YouTuber Richard Troyan of “True North Transparency” and Conrad Rankin and his son Nick of iiMPACT MEDIA were also in attendance during the videos, as the group has reportedly been touring California.

The Voice reports that the incident potentially caused the victim permanent vision damage, and he intended to file a lawsuit. His attorney, Andrew Watters of Redwood City, is also suing Troyan over a similar incident Watters witnessed himself in Menlo Park the following day, according to the Almanac News. Additionally, a video of a different incident on the same day shows Troyan allegedly pepper-spraying a man at a separate location in Menlo Park.

“They’re goading people into being pepper-sprayed by them. You can’t provoke someone with what they call ‘fighting words’ and then be surprised when someone gets angry,” said Watters, per the Voice.

The victim told police he was loading groceries into his car when he asked the men why they were filming him, suggesting they “find something better to do,” which led to insults and mockery by the group. He then reportedly pretended to lunge or “flinch” at the group to get them to back off, which they allege was assault.

He told police he then got in the car and began to leave out of fear of being attacked, according to the Voice. The victim said Maza held his camera inside his vehicle as he drove away.

Video footage of the confrontation reportedly shows Maza chase the victim’s vehicle and wait until he's in view of the camera before he begins allegedly pepper-spraying him in the face, according to the police report.

“[The victim] was confined to his vehicle and made no gesture to suggest he was going to get out of his car. Had Maza felt legitimately threatened, he could have simply walked away in any direction,” wrote Officer Wong.

The victim reportedly sustained 80% vision loss for 10 days following the altercation and has been experiencing 40% vision loss since. Per the Voice, he was diagnosed with a corneal abrasion and prescribed antibiotics, and the impairment could be permanent. Damages in the lawsuit could exceed $1 million.

Mountain View police arrested Maza on charges of felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and felony use of tear gas. Police also found three canisters of pepper spray in his possession. His car was later impounded, and police are reportedly awaiting a warrant to search it for evidence.

According to the Voice, Maza was arraigned and released on April 2 and ordered to stay at least 50 yards away from the Mountain View Costco. His next hearing is scheduled for May 19 at the Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Image: Reddit

It's a bad week in the courts for Meta, and also for Google and YouTube, after juries in two states came back with verdicts against the companies in high-profile cases about the dangers of social media.

Meta and Google were both found liable Wednesday by a jury in Los Angeles in a closely watched case involving social media addiction and teens. The jury found that both Instagram and YouTube were responsible for cultivating the increased usage of their platforms by plaintiff KGM, whose first name is Kaley — who, her attorneys say, began using YouTube at age 6, and Instagram at age 11, and she is now 20 years old.

Plaintiff's attorneys argued during the month-long trial that both Meta and Google had purposely designed their platforms to be addictive, and that they were aware of the harms they were doing to children and teens. In KGM's case, that addiction led to mental health crises, including depression and suicidal ideation.

The jury awarded KGM $6 million, as NPR reports, with $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, and with Meta covering about 70% of that sum.

"For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features," said co-lead attorney for the plaintiff Joseph VanZandt. "Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived."

The trial was attended by multiple sets of parents of teens who took their own lives or otherwise suffered mentally due to social media addictions. And the attorney of record for the plaintiff was Matthew Bergman of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center.

Reminder: This is the same case where CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed up to testify himself in February, and members of Meta's staff were called out by the judge for appearing to be illicitly recording the proceedings using Meta's Ray-Ban sunglasses with built-in cameras.

As NPR notes, the case has drawn comparisons to the landmark cases brought against Big Tobacco in the 1990s over similarly dangerous practices to encourage addiction to their products.

Meta is reportedly weighing its option, and Google has already said it plans to appeal the case. A spokesperson for Google, José Castañeda, said in a statement, "This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site."

Wednesday's verdict in Los Angeles follows another defeat in court involving Meta on Tuesday, in a case out of New Mexico. Both civil cases were being tried simultaneously, and the monetary damages in the New Mexico case are far larger.

As CNN reports, a jury returned a verdict in the New Mexico case after less than a day of deliberations, following a six-week trial, finding Meta liable for failing to warn users about the dangers of child predators on its platforms, and failing to protect young users from being targeted by those predators.

The jury found that Meta had engaged in “unfair and deceptive” and “unconscionable” trade practices, and ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages.

The case was brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez in 2023, following a whistleblower account from Arturo Bejar, a former engineering director at Meta, who testified at the trial that his own 14-year-old daughter had been targeted with sexually explicit messages on Instagram.

Torrez's investigation involved the creation of fake accounts purporting to be those of children, which investigators found were then contacted by child predators. Two of those men were subsequently arrested at a New Mexico motel in May 2024, after they allegedly arrived there seeking to have sex with a 12-year-old girl, depicted in one of those fake accounts.

Meta has said it will be appealing the case, and the company's attorneys argued in court that while bad actors and messages may slip through its safety filters, it had invested heavily in child safety on its platforms. A company spokesperson earlier said "child exploitation is a horrific crime and we’ve spent years building technology to combat it."

Andy Stone, Meta's longtime communications chief, critized Torrez's probe ahead of the verdict last week, tweeting that it was "an ethically compromised investigation into Meta that knowingly put real children at risk." And, he said that Torrez had "opted for a self-promotional political victory over child safety."

Stone specifically called out Torrez and the law firm that led the investigation for crossing legal and ethical lines through the use of real photos of actual children, without their consent, to create the fake profiles they used as bait for predators.

"And how did they justify using images of real children who would then be forever linked with their new online personas and predatory activity? Because they were 'profile pictures of minors from outside the United States,'" Stone writes. "That's right, it was OK because they weren't American children."

Stone also accused Torrez and his team of "proactively posting sexualized 'teen' content and friending adult strangers en masse" as part of their sting.

Per CNN, Torrez calls Meta's criticisms, "a distraction" and that the company should "focus on their own accountability."

Previously: Meta Team Scolded For Wearing Those Ray-Ban Glasses In Court During Zuckerberg Testimony

Opening statements started Monday in a trial where plaintiffs allege that Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are acting as ‘digital casinos’ designing their platforms to addict kids, and Zuckerberg will be forced to testify.

The big global news in social media is that the nation of Australia banned social media for kids 16 and under last month. Here in the US, a series of trials are set to be heard this year over social media companies allegedly fostering addiction among kids on purpose, including nine cases in LA, and several school districts nationwide rolling up their lawsuits into one large suit that will be heard in Oakland.

And the New York Times reports that one potentially landmark case had its opening statement on Monday and continues today, with some pretty damning evidence that Facebook. Meta, and YouTube designed their platforms to be like “digital casinos” fo children that are meant to be as addictive as cigarettes.

“They didn’t just build apps, they built traps,” plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier said in his opening argument Monday, per the Times. “They didn’t want users, they wanted addicts.”

The charges are considered serious enough that Mark Zuckerberg himself will be forced to testify in this trial. Also scheduled to testify is YouTube CEO Neal Mohan.

And the plaintiffs have some pretty powerful evidence on their side in the “digital casinos” allegation. Namely, they have internal Google/Alphabet/YouTube documentation that refers to the platform's offerings as “slot machines,” accompanied by images of casinos. Further, that documentation also comes right out and says “These are attention casinos,” and “The house always wins.”

The documentation has Meta employees saying that (in the Times' words) “the company’s tactics reminded them of tobacco companies." But there are also direct quotes from Instagram employees saying that their platform is “like a drug” and that employees were “basically pushers.”

The Associated Press points out that Snap and TikTok already settled on ths lawsuit, so there are probably some merits to all this. That said, both tech companies settled for undisclosed sums, so maybe they just bargained down to an amount that they were happy to just write the check and make this go away.

The plaintiffs in all of these cases are hoping for something similar to Big Tobacco’s historic 1998 $206 billion settlement where cigarette brands admitted they were marketing to kids and agreed to stop. But this may or may not get a similar result.

Remember, there have been a few of these “landmark” casses against Big Tech over the last two years. And Big Tech tends to usually win, or even when they lose, the consequences are so threadbare that it pretty much counts as a victory. We’ll see this time how the high-powered attorneys of Big Tech handle the adversaries of government lawyers and glorified class-action attorneys.  

Related: Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp [SFist]

Image: jjron via Wikimedia Commons

The Academy Awards will be departing network television and heading to YouTube under a new deal struck with the Alphabet-owned, San Bruno-based company, marking a major shift for the nearly 100-year-old awards show.

After the Academy Awards celebrates its 100th ceremony in 2028, the awards broadcast will be moving to YouTube under a "multifaceted global partnership" that will include red carpet coverage and more. As the Associated Press reports, this means that traditional network broadcaster ABC has only three more Oscars on its roster before the show moves fully into streaming.

"The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership [with YouTube] will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible — which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community," said academy chief executive Bill Kramer and academy president Lynette Howell Taylor in a joint statement Wednesday.

The news follows a tumultuous couple of weeks for Hollywood in which the Bay Area-headquartered Netflix announced an $83B takeover deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, and that was followed by the announcement of a hostile takeover attempt by rival Paramount Skydance.

And this is certainly a win for YouTube when it comes to legitimacy for its cable-cutting streaming product, YouTube TV. It's also a loss for Disney-owned ABC, which has been broadcasting the Oscars telecast since 1976.

As Deadline reports, Alphabet/YouTube outbid other suitors for the Academy Awards, and the Academy is promising more year-round programming once the arrangement begins. YouTube will air the 101st Oscars in 2029, and the deal runs through 2033.

The Oscars telecast and all other Oscar-related content will then live on an Oscars Channel on YouTube.

"This collaboration will leverage YouTube’s vast reach and infuse the Oscars and other Academy programming with innovative opportunities for engagement while honoring our legacy," Kramer and Howell Taylor say. "We will be able to celebrate cinema, inspire new generations of filmmakers and provide access to our film history on an unprecedented global scale."

Another prominent Hollywood Awards show has already made the move to streaming. Next year we will see the SAG Awards moving over to Netflix, and getting rebranded as "The Actors' Awards," as Deadline notes.

"The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” says YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, in a statement. "Partnering with the Academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy."

Top image: An Oscar statue is displayed during the 16th Governors Awards at The Ray Dolby Ballroom on November 16, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

YouTube’s parent company Alphabet announced Tuesday it’s allowing creators who received permanent bans over misinformation relating to COVID-19 and the 2020 election to apply to be reinstated. This likely includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Steve Bannon.

As CNBC reports, Alphabet referred to the new policy as a limited pilot program made available to a “subset of creators” who might be allowed back, along with those who violated policies that have since been revised.

As CBS News reports, the decision comes after the company began loosening its content moderation standards in 2023 surrounding election conspiracies, most notably the 2020 election. In 2024, the company eliminated its dedicated COVID-19 content restrictions, allowing discussions of unproven treatments on the platform.

Attorneys for Alphabet wrote in response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee that the new policy honors free speech and the company “values conservative voices,” which it says were censored by the Biden administration.

“No matter the political atmosphere, YouTube will continue to enable free expression on its platform, particularly as it relates to issues subject to political debate," the letter reads, per CBS. “YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”

“YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse,” the letter states, per CNN.

The letter also accuses the Biden administration of coercing the company into banning nefarious accounts, via CNN. “As online platforms, including Alphabet, grappled with these decisions, the Administration’s officials, including President Biden, created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation,” the letter states. “It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content.”

As CNBC notes, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino could potentially be reinstated on the platform.

As cybersecurity expert Yael Eisenstat tells CBS in the above clip, it’s really more about Alphabet’s bottom line than free speech.

Image: Cheng Xin/Getty Images

Related: Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies

Gen Z YouTube icon IShowSpeed drew Beatlemania-level excitement and received a dignitary’s welcome from Mayor Daniel Lurie in the Bay Area Thursday, though he and his fans were not always on their best behavior.

People who are old enough to legally buy alcohol may not be familiar with 20-year-old YouTube star IShowSpeed, who started as a gaming streamer, then rode a few online stunts, sexist outbursts, and crypto scams into a 44.5 million subscriber audience. IShowSpeed hit the Bay Area Thursday as KPIX reports, as part of his national tour that kicked off August 28, and came through San Francisco and Oakland yesterday.

He is actually livestreaming non-stop 24/7 on this tour, and should you have that much time on your hands, you can watch his full San Francisco tour (a nearly 12-hour long video), and his full Oakland tour (also 12 hours long). Out of mercy, below we will cover just the highlights, and the lowlights.

One of Speed's first stops was SF City Hall where he was welcomed by Mayor Daniel Lurie, and Lurie’s trademark attempt at sounding enthusiastic and genuine. Though this is maybe smart politics by Lurie. While Lurie has been burned by associations with social media crusaders whose reputations went south, the outreach to young viral internet stars is something the Democratic party could maybe use more of.

IShowSpeed was also feted by the SFPD and the SF Fire Department, again, in a nicely choreographed scene that may affect the national discourse that portrays SF as some sort of lawless hellhole.

The day was not without its low moments. IShowSpeed was sort of a Pied Piper and drew thousands of fans following him around all day. But the above incident is just one case, over the course of his visits through Union Square, the Tenderloin, and Fisherman’s Wharf, where his security shoved people around, despite not particularly aggressive behavior by the fans.

Some fans were also on bad behavior. Here’s one motorist who held up traffic to get pictures of Speed, then promptly pulled a hit-and-run after running into a cyclist.

For the Oakland component of his visit, he visited the popular Hyphy Burger, certainly a nice aspect of Oakland to highlight. But as the YouTube star stood on top of a vehicle to take in his adoring crowd, KTVU reports that a sideshow broke out, which seemed to confuse him, and he declared, “I can’t watch this shit.”

If you watch more than just these snippets, you’ll see that IShowSpeed sometimes gives autographs to fans, and at other times he’s a real jerk. This is a 20-year-old attention whore and narcissist who’s putting a camera on himself 24/7, so you will see a mix of acts of kindness combined with acts of assholery.

Regardless, the kid’s livestream indicates he’s on his way to Las Vegas as of press time for this post (about 24,000 people are watching , though absolutely nothing is happening). So he’s somebody’s else’s problem now.

Related: In-N-Out Sues YouTube Prankster for Vulgar Video Where He Impersonated a Store Employee, Made Condom Jokes [SFist]

Image: IShowSpeed via Youtube

Apparently the In-N-Out burger chain will sue you if you make YouTube videos impersonating one of their employees and saying there are condoms and cockroaches in their food, as one SoCal YouTuber has discovered this week.

In the world of wannabe viral video stars, we had not been previously familiar with the work of Bryan Arnett. His schtick seems to pulling Jerky Boys-style pranks done in-person as opposed to over the phone, like his trying to spend 24 hours in a Planet Fitness to test their 24-hour policy, or driving around with a baby seat on top of his car to horrify people for laughs.

But CBS Money Watch reports that one of his recent videos impersonating an In-N-Out employee in full uniform has drawn a lawsuit from the In-N-Out burger chain, who’ve sued Arnett over his "lewd, derogatory and profane remarks" while claiming to be an In-N-Out employee, and then posting the video to his 335,000 subscribers.

The supposedly incriminating video has since been made private, and we have not been able to find it or embed it. But SFGate got a look at it, and it was reportedly shot on an Easter Sunday, when all In-N-Out locations are closed. Arnett hangs out in uniform at an In-N-Out drive-thru where unaware customers are pulling up anyway, apparently saying things like, “I like watching my wife sleeping with other men. Is that something you’d be interested in?” He reportedly tells another customer, “We’ve had a pretty bad cockroach problem this week,” and tells others that there are condoms in their food.

According to CBS, the lawsuit says that Arnett told other drive-thru patrons that employees at the location "put their feet in lettuce served to customers.”

In-N-Out is suing Arnett for trademark infringement (for the replica uniform) and for business defamation. The company is suing for financial damages, as well as any monetization money Arnett may have made from that particular video.

The burger chain also seeks to ban Arnett from all In-N-Out establishments nationwide, and force him to remove any online videos or posts mentioning In-N-Out.

Related: SF's Health Department Is Trolling In-N-Out on Twitter Now [SFist]

Image: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 24: An In-N-Out Burger logo is displayed outside their restaurant on February 24, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

• Following recent deaths and multiple rescues, San Francisco officials are urging visitors to avoid entering the water at Ocean Beach this Memorial Day weekend. Instead, how about heading to the much more gentle bay side of the water, such as Aquatic Park or Crane Cove Park. [KQED]
• About 20 Stanford students are on the 11th day of a hunger strike, demanding the university cut ties with companies linked to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Protesters also want looser protest rules, dropped charges, and a stronger stance from school leaders. [SFGate]
• YouTube has hired longtime Disney executive Justin Connolly as its global head of media and sports, prompting Disney to sue YouTube for breach of contract and interference, seeking to block the appointment. [Bloomberg]
• A San Francisco boy with a rare bone marrow disease has been on the donor waitlist for over a year, facing challenges finding a match due to his Chinese and Vietnamese heritage. [NBC Bay Area]

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• The Southern California portion of Pacific Coast Highway reopened Friday morning for the first time since the January Palisades Fire, restoring a key route between Malibu and Pacific Palisades. [Chronicle]
• Just an adorable family of three enjoying their beers at the Giants game. [@SFGiantsFaithful]

National:

• At least 12 people were injured, including three critically, in a stabbing attack at a Hamburg train station, where a 39-year-old woman suspect was arrested. Authorities say she likely acted alone and may have been in mental distress. [ABC7]
• Boeing has reached a $1.1 billion deal with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution over two deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. While the agreement includes $445 million in victim compensation and safety reforms, families who have spent years demanding a public trial and harsher accountability strongly oppose the deal. [CBS News]
• More than 100 National Security Council staffers — including both career officials and Trump-era political appointees — were abruptly placed on administrative leave Friday after an email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack gave them 30 minutes to clear out their desks as part of a controversial restructuring led by interim adviser Marco Rubio. [Yahoo News]
• NOAA predicts an above-average Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1, with 13–19 named storms and up to five major hurricanes, driven by unusually warm ocean temperatures and intensified monsoon activity. [NBC News]

Video of the Day:

• Watch rare footage from Sesame Street’s first-ever national tour with a stop in Golden Gate Park where Big Bird and the gang performed for 15,000 fans in what was called a “Preschooler’s Woodstock.”

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Still Making Weekend Plans?

In case you missed it, SFist let you know about the Chinatown Pride event as well as Saturday’s line-up at Yerba Buena Gardens. Here are a couple more big events happening this weekend.

• Carnaval San Francisco, Afro Mundo: Celebrate the African diaspora in the Americas with a weekend of music, dance, and food. Saturday–Sunday, May 24–25 | 11 AM–6 PM | Mission District, SF | Free
• SF Queer Art & Music Festival: Nine-day celebration across the Tenderloin featuring DJs, drag, and visual art. May 23–31 | Various venues, SF
• Crucial Reggae Sundays: Relax with live reggae music in Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse. Sunday, May 25 | 4:20–7:30 PM | Golden Gate Park, SF | Free

Image: Aquatic Park; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• An 87-year-old woman was struck and seriously injured in a hit-and-run in the Fillmore District Monday night, and the suspect vehicle has not been found. The collision happened around 8:45 pm at the intersection of Fillmore and McAllister streets, and the woman was reportedly walking in a crosswalk at the time. [KRON4]
• Marley Barclay, the 14-year-old who was one of two survivors of a deadly crash in Marin County last weekend, has been released from Children's Hospital in Oakland. "Marley and her family are keeping the other young women involved in this tragedy and their families in their prayers," a spokesperson for the family said. "They are grieving this tremendous loss of life alongside the broader community." [KTVU]
• The parents of 19-year-old Krysta Tsukahara, who was killed in that Cybertruck crash and fire in Piedmont just before Thanksgiving, are suing the owner of the Cybertruck and the estate of the deceased driver, Soren Dixon. Even though Tsukahara was not killed by the crash impact, but burned alive because she could not exit the vehicle, Tesla is not named in this lawsuit. [KTVU]
• A car fire in the Caldecott Tunnel was creating traffic troubles on eastbound Highway 24 in the East Bay today. [ABC 7]
• Oakland writer and comedian W. Kamau Bell is a finalist on Celebrity Jeopardy!, and the finale airs tonight on ABC at 9 pm. [ABC 7]

National:

• He hasn't done any press briefings to date, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a makeup studio to be installed at the Pentagon, for his frequent Fox News appearances. [CBS News]
• Trump's approval rating is now at 45% and apparently falling steadily. [New York Times]
• Meta has now opened up advertising on its Threads app to all advertisers worldwide, after testing ads in just a few markets. [TechCrunch]

Video:

• YouTube turns 20 this week, if you can believe it. So here is what's considered the first YouTube video to go viral, SNL's "Lazy Sunday," which aired in December 2025 and was uploaded by fans almost immediately before being ordered removed by NBC Universal in February 2006.

Photo by Jared Erondu

The Supreme Court, in one of its final days of delivering opinions this term, issued a unanimous decision Monday tossing two cases back to lower courts, stymieing a Republican-led effort to litigate their feelings about social media platforms' handling of the 2020 election, and of Donald Trump after January 6th.

It's the second blow in a week to Republican lawmakers and attorneys general who continue to try to litigate how Silicon Valley companies "censor" conservative speech and address the unprecedented nature of former President Donald Trump's social media use. And the unanimous decision Monday indicates a bit more about how the justices may address future cases when it comes to online expression, content moderation, and the First Amendment.

The two cases in question are First Amendment challenges brought by social media platforms against two state laws enacted in 2021, in the states of Florida and Texas. Both laws sought to limit the ways in which social media companies, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, moderate and remove content posted by users — reactions, in the wake of the 2020 election, to how the platforms labeled misinformation and other political content especially, and to the banning of Trump on the basis that he encited violence on January 6th.

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan writes that "there is much work to do below on both these cases," explaining that addressing the balance of First Amendment interests of social media companies with those of users was adequately addressed in either case. Kagan notes that the law is very new when it comes to social media, and that "Not even thirty years ago, this Court felt the need to explain to the opinion-reading public that the “Internet is an international network of interconnected computers." And now, Kagan writes, "These years have brought a dizzying transformation in how people communicate, and with it a raft of public policy issues."

While not ruling on the merits of the cases, as the New York Times notes, Kagan hints in her introduction at where a majority of justices may stand should such a case return to their docket.

"The questions of whether, when, and how to regulate online entities, and in particular the social-media giants, are understandably on the front-burner of many legislatures and agencies," Kagan writes. "But courts still have a necessary role in protecting those entities’ rights of speech, as courts have historically protected traditional media’s rights."

Kagan goes on to explain the parallels with the role of traditional media, like a newspaper editor's choices to curate stories for different reasons.

"In constructing certain feeds, those platforms make choices about what third-party speech to display and how to display it," Kagan writes. "They include and exclude, organize and prioritize — and in making millions of those decisions each day, produce their own distinctive compilations of expression. And while much about social media is new, the essence of that project is something this Court has seen before."

And Justice Kagan goes on to cite examples of cases where the court has upheld the rights of parade organizers, newspapers, and others to exclude a minority of participants or content that they deem offensive or incompatible with their respective projects.

Addressing the Texas law, Kagan suggests that the Fifth Circuit was wrong to ignore the First Amendment implications for the companies themselves, versus users. "It prevents a platform from compiling the third-party speech it wants in the way it wants, and thus from offering the expressive product that most reflects its own views and priorities." And, Kagan adds, "this Court has many times held, in many contexts, that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression — to "un-bias" what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences."

Today's decision marks another in a series of solid wins at the nation's high court for social media companies, who for years now have been fending off attacks by Republicans who see their content moderation practices as violations of the First Amendment. Here, without declaring as such in a merits-based decision, Kagan suggests that the court will likely fall on the side of the platforms just as they would a newspaper or magazine, recognizing that they have First Amendment protections of their own as forms of "the press."

Last week, the court similarly ruled, not on merits but on standing, to toss back two similar cases brought by Louisiana and Missouri about the removal of Facebook posts deemed to be misinformation. That ruling was 6-3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing for the majority and joined by Kagan, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The ruling said that a group of social media users in each case lacked standing to sue Facebook. As Justice Barrett writes, "The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely. But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants' communications with the platforms. Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms."

And last term, in May 2023, the court ruled in favor of Google and Twitter in a challenge to Section 230 — the provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that has been frequently cited to protect social platforms from liability for the content posted by their users. That ruling addressed a pair of cases related to radicalization on the internet, and specifically to terrorists in the 2015 Paris nightclub bombing who were allegedly radicalized by watching YouTube videos by ISIS members.

In all three rulings, the court has upheld the Bay Area-based companies' modes of doing business, and their rights to create algorithms and curate user content as they wish.

Regarding today's ruling, the New York Times writes, "A ruling that tech platforms have no editorial discretion to decide which posts to allow would have exposed users to a greater variety of viewpoints but almost certainly would also have amplified the ugliest aspects of the digital age, including hate speech and disinformation."

Previously: Biden Administration Seeks Supreme Court Intervention In Case About Twitter 'Censorship' Brought By Republicans

Photo: Souvik Bannerjee

Several lawsuits stemming directly from a 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York grocery store, which contend that social media platforms actively engage and profit from individuals spreading and consuming hate speech with deadly consequences, can move forward, a judge has ruled.

While Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other companies have successfully avoided legal judgments against them over the years when it comes to the consequences of content posted by others on those platforms, a judge in New York thinks she sees a new angle on the issue.

As CNN reports, Erie County Supreme Court Justice Paula Feroleto is allowing suits to move forward that blame Meta, Alphabet, Reddit, and 4chan for helping to radicalize then-18-year-old Payton Gendron to commit the heinous mass shooting he allegedly committed for racist reasons in May 2022.

We learned in the days after the shooting, which took the lives of 10 Black residents of Buffalo who were shopping at a Tops supermarket, that Gendron subscribed to the "white replacement theory" or Great Replacement Theory — the same theory that is all over X to this day, and that Elon Musk sounds very much like he is parroting when he spewed his thoughts on illegal immigration in that Don Lemon interview.

Gendron published a 180-page manifesto spouting his racist and paranoid views, lifting entire sections of it from a manifesto published three years earlier, when Brenton Tarrant killed 50 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, live-streaming his crime on Facebook.

Judge Feroleto said in her decision this week that Facebook, YouTube, 4chan, and Reddit all "profit from the racist, antisemitic, and violent material displayed on their platforms to maximize user engagement." And while the companies may consistently say that they bear no legal responsibility for content posted by third parties, and that they function like "message boards," Feroleto sided with the plaintiffs saying, "plaintiffs contend the defendants’ platforms are more than just message boards. They allege they are sophisticated products designed to be addictive to young users and they specifically directed Gendron to further platforms or postings that indoctrinated him with 'white replacement theory'."

As Reuters reports, the 25 plaintiffs in the lawsuits against each company include "store employees and customers who witnessed the May 14, 2022 shooting, and the son of one of those killed."

The Supreme Court ruled last year, in a case stemming from the ISIS terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, that social media platforms were not responsible for content that radicalizes people toward violence. In that decision, the court ruled that neither Twitter nor YouTube was responsible for content that radicalized the Paris shooters — and that ruling would seem to doom this New York prosecution along the same lines.

The decision effectively upheld Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 law that social media companies have used for two decades now to shield themselves from liability for the content posted by users.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in that case, Gonzalez v. Google, saying, "It might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal – and sometimes terrible – ends. But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally."

Regarding the Buffalo case, YouTube issued a statement saying, "While we disagree with today’s decision and will be appealing, we will continue to work with law enforcement, other platforms, and civil society to share intelligence and best practices."

Reddit also responded, giving CNN this statement: "Hate and violence have no place on Reddit. Our sitewide policies explicitly prohibit content that promotes hate based on identity or vulnerability, as well as content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people. We are constantly evaluating ways to improve our detection and removal of this content, including through enhanced image-hashing systems, and we will continue to review the communities on our platform to ensure they are upholding our rules."

Previously: Supreme Court Hands Big Tech a Big Win In Content Moderation Cases

Top image: Payton Gendron arrives for a hearing at the Erie County Courthouse on May 19, 2022 in Buffalo, New York. Gendron is accused of killing 10 people and wounding another 3 during a shooting at a Tops supermarket on May 14 in Buffalo. The attack was believed to be motivated by racial hatred. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

YouTuber Trevor Jacob made a poor example of himself and YouTube stunt artists in general two years ago when, while promoting a wallet for a sponsor, he filmed a video in which he deliberately crashed a small plane in Santa Barbara County.

Setting aside the massive risk of sparking a wildfire with such a stunt, Jacob also potentially put lives in danger and more when, on November 24, 2021, he ejected from a plane he was piloting and video-recorded both himself parachuting to safety and plane crash landing without a pilot — all for the pageviews.

He ejected over the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Maria, and the plane crashed in a dry brush area of the forest moments later.

Jacob, now 30 years old, pleaded guilty in the case in May, and on Monday he was sentenced in federal court to six months for obstructing a federal investigation.

Jacob gets off pretty lucky here, given that he faced a potential 20-year sentence, and given the aforementioned possibility of getting wildfire arson charges added as well.

The obstruction charge came after federal investigators determined that Jacob had lied to them about the plane crash, and tried to cover up his deliberate role in it by retrieving the wreckage himself and trying clandestinely to dispose of it.

Much of the crime was, of course, captured for posterity and posted to YouTube, all in promotion of a (crypto?) wallet, as the feds explain.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launched an investigation into the crash the day that Jacob informed them of it, on November 26, after he had already hiked out to the crash site and retrieved all his recording devices.

"In the weeks following the plane crash, Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location," federal prosecutors say in a release. "In fact, on December 10, 2021, Jacob and a friend flew by helicopter to the wreckage site. There, Jacob used straps to secure the wreckage, which the helicopter lifted and carried to Rancho Sisquoc in Santa Barbara County, where it was loaded onto a trailer attached to Jacob’s pickup truck."

The wreckage was then taken to Lompoc City Airport, unloaded into a hangar, cut up, and disposed of in various trash bins at the airport.

After uploading a video on December 23, 2021 titled "I Crashed My Airplane," Jacob then lied to federal investigators "when he submitted an aircraft accident incident report that falsely indicated that the aircraft experienced a full loss of power approximately 35 minutes after takeoff."

The video, which was still online as of May, has since been removed.

"It appears that [Jacob] exercised exceptionally poor judgment in committing this offense,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. “[Jacob] most likely committed this offense to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain. Nevertheless, this type of 'daredevil' conduct cannot be tolerated."

Previously: SoCal YouTuber Admits He Crashed An Airplane Just for the Clicks, Faces 20 Years In Prison

If you have an old Gmail account you haven't used in two years, be warned it is on the chopping block, as on Friday Google will start deleting accounts that have not been used in two years or longer.

Several tech companies have historically engaged in schemes to try to inflate their user numbers, in hopes of attracting investors or jacking up their stock price. But those matters are not concerns for Silicon Valley giant Google (or Alphabet, whatever) who have no need to inflate their user numbers. And any little-used Google accounts can pose identity theft and hacking threats because of their general lack of two-step-verification added to the accounts.

And CNN reminds us that Google is going to start deleting abandoned accounts on Friday, December 1. The company actually announced this move back in May, but the purge starts Friday. They’re only deleting accounts that haven’t been logged into in two years, as those accounts overwhelmingly do not have two-factor authentication set up. And a lack of two-factor authentication makes those accounts highly vulnerable to spam, phishing, and hacking.

“To reduce this risk, we are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts to 2 years across our products,” Google said in that May 16 company blog post. “Starting later this year, if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, we may delete the account and its contents – including content within Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar) and Google Photos.”

According to NPR, Google has already been sending multiple warning notifications to accounts at risk of being deleted, as well as to those users’ recovery emails (if one was provided). And they’ll only delete personal accounts, not accounts belonging to organizations like schools or businesses.

If you’re unsure if you’ve used your Google account in the last two years, the ways to keep your account active show the staggering and invasive reach of Google products. All you have to do to render your Google account  active is to read one Gmail email, use Google Drive for something one time, download an app on Google Play, or even just watch a YouTube video. It’s difficult to imagine anyone going two years without doing any of those things these days, though sure, some people may have decided they prefer other platforms for those things.

If you have one of those abandoned accounts and want to download your old pictures or files, the Google Takeout page lets you download and/or export old files.

KTVU has some tips on what to do if you forgot your old Google email or password. The company offers tools to recover your Gmail address or reset your password, recover your Google account, or recover a hijacked or compromised Google account.

Related: Google Agrees To Pay Nearly $400 Million Settlement Over Basically Lying About Letting You Turn Off Location Tracking [SFist]

Image: Brett Jordan via Unsplash

Two separate lawsuits against tech companies Google and Twitter both went in favor of the tech titans Thursday, as the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that neither were responsible for terrorist acts that were linked to content on their platforms.

We said that the fate of the internet was at stake in February when the Supreme Court decided they would hear a case challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that effectively provides legal immunity to tech platforms for offensive content that individual users post. The case they took was from the family of a college student killed in a 2015 ISIS terrorist attack in Paris, whose family argued that YouTube’s algorithm allowed terrorist videos to reach a broader audience. But if the case had gone against Youtube and Google, websites would have been forced to scrape gigantic amounts of user-generated content from their sites, and could have faced waves of lawsuits and legal jeopardy.  

The case did not go against Google. CNN reports that the Supreme Court sided with the tech company and upheld Section 230, and did so in a pair of unanimous votes.

“It might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal – and sometimes terrible – ends,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the unanimous decision. “But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.”

“We conclude,” he added, “that plaintiffs’ allegations are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack.”

There were two actually two cases here, one against Alphabet-owned Google and Youtube (Gonzalez v. Google), and another against Twitter (Twitter v. Taamneh). But both cases were about terrorist content that ISIS-affiliated actors had posted on those platforms, which plaintiffs in both cases sai that Twitter and Google bore some responsibility for subsequent terrorist attacks.

Several other tech companies lined up in support of Google, with Craigslist, Microsoft, and Yelp submitting their own friend-of-the-court filings saying that innocuous posts on their own platforms would be affected if Section 230 were overturned. Additionally, Reddit moderators argued that if the court went the other way, they could be held liable for posts on their own subreddits, an argument with which the justices sympathized.

“Countless companies, scholars, content creators and civil society organizations who joined with us in this case will be reassured by this result,” Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado said in a statement after the ruling. “We’ll continue our work to safeguard free expression online, combat harmful content, and support businesses and creators who benefit from the internet.”

Related: Supreme Court Showdown: Big Tech vs the Law, with the Fate of the Internet at Stake [SFist]

Image: Claire Anderson via Unsplash

A 29-year-old YouTuber from Lompoc has pleaded guilty to crashing an airplane on purpose for the pageviews, then lying to federal investigators and clandestinely disposing of the wreckage.

We had a fair amount of disgust last month over the Petaluma “Influencer Mom” who made up story that an innocent Latino couple had kidnapped her kids, and then used the fake story to drive traffic to her Instagram account. Yet a new influencer-gone-amuck story from Santa Barbara County shows a far more dangerous hoax stunt stunt that could have had much deadlier consequences, as CNN reports that a Lompoc man pleaded guilty to faking his own plane crash for YouTube views, “in a video he made to promote a [crypto?] wallet.”

So this was some sort of sponsorship deal for 29-year-old Trevor Jacob, but on Thursday the Department of Justice announced Jacob pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal investigation over the ruse.

The 12-minute video “I Crashed My Airplane” is actually still online (are they allowing him to still monetize it?), and was recorded on the day of the incident, November 24, 2021. Jacob has decked out the plane with all manner of cameras, and at the 1:50 mark he gets out of the plane and jumps with a parachute. The plane is then flying with no pilot (though equipped with several cameras which are still rolling) and crashes at the 3:36 mark.

Jacob then finds the plane at the 6:07 mark, and complains, “I had a water jug in the back” that was no longer there. He tries to generate sympathy for his post-crash plight, though it’s pretty clear watching the video that he’s done all of this on purpose. Upon meeting a stranger after the crash, he claims “I had an engine go out in the mountains,” though according to the Justice Department, Jacob later admitted the crash was intentional and “he intended to make money through the video.”

But it’s not the airplane crash that has Jacob in so much legal jeopardy, it’s the lying to federal investigators after the crash.

Both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigated the crash. Jacob falsely claimed to both agencies the plane had a full loss of power and an engine failure, even though it’s clear on his YouTube video that neither of these things happened. He also admitted he lied in his schemes to conceal the plane’s wreckage.

“Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location,” the DOJ says in the release. “In fact, on December 10, 2021, Jacob and a friend flew by helicopter to the wreckage site. There, Jacob used straps to secure the wreckage, which the helicopter lifted and carried to Rancho Sisquoc in Santa Barbara County, where it was loaded onto a trailer attached to Jacob’s pickup truck.” He then apparently disseminated the wreckage in trash bins at the Lompoc City Airport.

The obstruction of a federal investigation charge comes with a maximum 20-year sentence, and Jacob had his pilot’s license revoked in April 2022.

Related: Dude Seen Harassing Pier 39 Sea Lions In Viral Video Being Investigated [SFist]

Screenshot via YouTube