Law & Justice
Ninth Circuit Affirms Meta’s Section 230 Shield in Publisher’s Conversion Claim
In a ruling dated October 30, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a conversion claim brought by the Canadian publisher Shared Partnership v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (No. 25‑2612). The three‑judge panel held that Meta was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act because removing the publisher’s Facebook pages was part of Meta’s role as a publisher. The court rejected the argument that framing the dispute as a contractual violation could remove that protection.
Shared had built a large Facebook audience, at one point claiming 25 million followers, and had run more than 500,000 ads. In October 2020 Meta cancelled Shared’s Facebook pages, citing repeated violations of its terms and policies. The publisher said the shutdown was devastating, arguing that it had an exclusive property interest in its pages and that Meta had unlawfully interfered by removing them. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the conversion claim, finding that Section 230 protected Meta from liability for decisions involving the publication or removal of third‑party content.
Shared appealed, recasting its conversion theory as a breach‑of‑contract claim based on Facebook’s Terms of Service. The publisher argued that Meta could suspend or permanently disable an account only when a user had clearly, seriously, or repeatedly violated its terms or policies, and that it had not committed such violations. It also cited the Ninth Circuit’s earlier decision in Calise v. Meta Platforms, which recognized that certain contractual claims could fall outside Section 230 protection when they involved obligations separate from a platform’s publishing activities. The appeals court rejected this argument, finding that the relevant terms did not establish the separate contractual promise Shared was asserting.
Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee wrote for the panel that Section 230 protects online platforms when they act as publishers or speakers of content supplied by others. Publishing includes deciding whether to remove content or prevent it from appearing on a platform. Thus, Meta’s decision to unpublish Shared’s Facebook pages fell within its editorial responsibilities. The court distinguished the case from Calise, where the contractual promise involved Meta’s commitment to combat deceptive advertising rather than its general editorial authority over content.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Shared’s conversion claim, leaving the lower court’s decision intact. The ruling reinforces that online platforms can rely on Section 230 protection when deciding whether to remove users and their content, even when those decisions have significant consequences for a publisher’s business.