How a lawsuit against Google could impact tech giants and school districts

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00:00A family in Utah has filed a class action lawsuit against Google,

00:04saying the tech giant didn't prevent kids using school-issued Chromebooks from accessing adult

00:09content. The suit claims an 11-year-old accessed pornography on school-issued Chromebooks.

00:18The family alleges their child received a Chromebook for remote learning and algorithms

00:23led the child to sexual content. The school reportedly placed a high-restriction designation

00:28on the child's account, but access to porn was still possible. Google has not publicly

00:34commented on the suit. The suit also alleges that the law puts the onus on companies like Google

00:40to ensure kids can safely use their products, but does it? I don't think we necessarily have

00:46those answers yet. I think this is the first type of lawsuit that I actually am aware of

00:57that will essentially bring, hopefully bring us answers to that.

01:04Artzer said Google is certainly capable of doing that, but school districts likely can as well.

01:09They're providing the software on that laptop that, and they can program it so that, you know,

01:17so that it cannot essentially get to certain websites. The school districts have, you know,

01:23in most cases pretty good IT departments, and that can add, that should be able to add

01:31certain types of, you know, filters. According to the complaint, the school district's third party

01:37couldn't prevent access to pornographic content despite attempts to limit access. Now, while it

01:43certainly seems easier for Google to be the ones to limit access, there's plenty of reasons why Google

01:48might not do that automatically. It's not just people under 18 using those laptops. There may be,

01:55you know, there, there, you know, obviously, um, if, you know, colleges and you colleges,

02:00universities, et cetera, people over 18. So there's, you know, maybe using them, it might have,

02:05you know, a legitimate reason, uh, to go to, to, to visit certain websites. And yeah, whether it's,

02:15uh, research or cybersecurity or something like that. Because this lawsuit could answer a big

02:22question, there will likely be a lot of industries and people paying attention. I think that as a

02:27parent, I think parents should actually be kind of following this, um, and as well as, yeah,

02:34obviously tech companies, uh, you know, laptop makers, software, uh, providers that provide

02:41those types of filters, as well as, um, even potentially, uh, you know, obviously the school

02:49systems themselves and, you know, potentially even, uh, lawmakers, um, you know, should actually be

02:56very, uh, cognizant of, you know, of, of this, this whole situation.

03:03For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan. For more unbiased, fact-driven news,

03:07download the Straight Arrow News mobile app, or you can visit san.com.