It is also not so clear that simply recommending additional defamatory
content based on the interest of a user in defamatory content rises to the level
of “codevelopment.” In Roommates.com, the court focused on the fact that the
platform used impermissibly discriminatory criteria in ﬁltering and delivering
apartment listings to users. However, in an effort to distinguish this case from
other platforms that might arguably perform the same function, the court
observed that the use of a “neutral [tool] to carry out what may be unlawful
or illicit searches” on an “ordinary search engine” does not expose that service
itself to liability.40 This is arguably the case here; a platform like Facebook does
not explicitly solicit and then ﬁlter based on defamatory content. This sets the
case apart from the design in Roommates.com, in which the platform presented
a set of predeﬁned categories that themselves were characteristics it was illegal
Social_Media_and_Democracy