A Novel Tort Duty for Platforms That Intermediately Produce Real World User Interactions

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.