MIAMI VALLEY — Miami Valley police departments and school districts, along with others across the country, have increased security in response to social media posts warning of shootings and bomb threats at schools nationwide on Friday.
TikTok said Friday that it had searched for content that promoted violence but found nothing. The company, however, did find content discussing the rumor and that “local authorities, the FBI and DHS have confirmed there’s no credible threat.”
Educators were being cautious in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, on Nov. 30, when a 15-year-old gunman killed four students and wounded seven other people. The shooting has been followed by numerous copycat threats to schools in other districts.
There have been nine active and 235 non-active shooter incidents at schools so far this year, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security.
The posts on TikTok follow a trend that has had students acting out social media challenges. In September, students nationwide participated in a “devious licks” challenge, where they posted videos of themselves vandalizing school bathrooms and stealing soap dispensers, the AP reported.
A social media challenge in October encouraged students to slap a teacher, which led the National Education Association to urge the leaders of Facebook, Twitter and TikTok to intervene, according to the AP.
Internet companies such as TikTok are generally exempt from liability under U.S. law for what is posted on their platforms, thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the AP reported.
“It would be unlikely that TikTok would be liable if there were actually to be a shooting,” Jeff Kosseff, who wrote a book about Section 230 and teaches cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy, told the AP. “Even without 230, there are just a lot of barriers against being able to bring a cause of action against the medium on which a threat was posted.”
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