Abstract This paper addresses one kind of tort duty that is owed by one kind of platform. With respect to the latter, I focus on platforms that aim to bring about “real world” interactions, such as Lyft/Uber, Airbnb, and Tinder/Grindr. With respect to the former, I focus on the duty to protect users from the attacks of other users and/or third parties. Rather than argue that such platforms incur this kind of duty on grounds of current tort doctrine, I argue that a new doctrine is justified according to which the relevant platforms incur a duty to protect against the actions of others by virtue of their distinct nature as intermediators.
Jordan Wallace-Wolf (Mon,) studied this question.