Mom demands Big Tech accountability, says federal law blocking justice for deceased son

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Friday, February 06, 2026

A California mother whose 16-year-old son died by suicide following severe cyberbullying joined anti-sexual exploitation advocates and bipartisan lawmakers in demanding the reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which they say Big Tech uses as a loophole to avoid accountability for distributing offensive or explicit content.

Kristin Bride, who lost her son Carson in 2020, said during a Wednesday news conference at the U.S. Capitol that Section 230 has prevented her from achieving justice for her child. According to the mother, Carson ended his life after cyberbullies harassed him through YOLO, an anonymous application integrated into Snapchat. 

“YOLO opened with a pop-up screen promising that it would monitor cyberbullying and reveal and ban abusers,” Bride stated. “Yet, the last search on Carson's phone before he ended his life was for hacks to find out who was doing this to him.” 

"This was the darkest day of my life," she added. 

The mother wants legal recourse for her son’s death, but one attorney that she met with told her that Section 230 made social media companies immune to lawsuits. Nearly six years later, Bride is still fighting a legal battle in federal court, but Section 230 is preventing technology companies from being held accountable. 

“I urge lawmakers to prioritize meaningful Section 230 reform. It is essential that tech companies are held accountable for the safety of their products, like every single industry in America,” Bride stated. “In this way, we can finally protect families from these preventable tragedies.”

Other speakers at the event included Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, former Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-MO, Rep. Brandon Guffey, R-S.C., and Devin J. Norring Foundation founder Bridgette Norring.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation Chief Legal Officer Dani Pinter said that Section 230’s original purpose was “to protect children and incentivize platforms to make their platform safe.”

“Instead, Section 230 has become a shield from accountability for Big Tech's bad faith decisions to cause harm in pursuit of profit,” Pinter asserted. “Expansive and erroneous judicial interpretations, combined with unimaginable technological advancement, has flipped the incentive structure intended by Congress on its head.”

“Rather than incentivizing tech companies to take steps to make their platforms safer, Section 230 has emboldened tech platforms to make profits at any cost,” she added. 

“As a result, we now have a tech industry larger and more profitable than any industry on the planet in the history of the world. Today's Big Tech industry views vulnerable populations and our children as collateral damage to their business model built on greed,” the anti-sexual exploitation advocate continued. 

“Because of Section 230, we have a tech industry that exists above the law,” Pinter declared. “Courts have found that Section 230 protects social media platforms even when they commit heinous crimes like knowingly possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material.”

NCOSE included Section 230 in its 2025 Dirty Dozen List, an annual campaign that the organization releases every year to highlight companies and entities that have enabled sexual exploitation. The 2025 Dirty Dozen List highlights the stories of 12 survivors who the advocacy group said were denied justice because of Section 230. 

Each of the stories concerns an individual who had sexually explicit images of themselves distributed on various online platforms, including Reddit, Snapchat and Craigslist. Even though some of the content featured child sex abuse material, NCOSE reported that Section 230 shielded the platforms from legal accountability. 

“We cannot permit this any longer. And with the rise of artificial intelligence, this is urgent,” Pinter stated during the news conference on Wednesday. “We at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation commend Senators Durbin and Graham for their leadership in this bipartisan effort to update the laws to better reflect the industry we have today.”

Last year, Durbin and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, introduced the Sunset To Reform Section 230 Act, which would repeal Section 230 immunity two years after enactment, allowing users to bring legal action against platforms that harmed them.

“We need to protect every American whose safety and security is at risk by this unaccountable and unscrupulous tech industry. On behalf of the survivors we represent, we proudly support this historic bill to sunset section 230,” Pinter concluded.