Collaborators Using the ‘Instagram Collabs’ Feature May Forego a Section 230 Defense–Winer v. Mohammed

[I have so many Section 230 cases backlogged in my blogging queue, but this one is jumping the queue because of its comparative novelty.]

This is a defamation case between a professor and a student in the Emory School of Medicine. It is one of the countless lawsuits related to the Gaza war, Palestinian rights, and Zionism/anti-Zionism.

In this case, the student publicly and repreatedly criticized the professor for serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and in response the school suspended her. Her suspension became a cause celebre. Separately, the professor sued her and several outlets that amplified her remarks. It is a major proxy battle over its highly charged topics; about two dozen lawyers are litigating some aspect of this case.

This post focuses on one corner of that larger litigation endeavor. Two defendants, CAIR Georgia and CAIR Foundation, used the Instagram Collabs feature to jointly post allegedly defamatory content involving the student’s story. Instagram describes the Collabs feature:

Instagram Collabs allow you to co-author posts with other accounts, sharing the post with both sets of followers and listing both accounts as authors. To create one, tap Tag people and then Invite collaborator before publishing your post; the invited user must then accept the invite via their messages to be added.

CAIR Foundation claimed that Section 230 protected it from liability for the collaborated post with CAIR Georgia. The court disagrees:

it is apparent from the face of the Second Amended Complaint that CAIR Foundation served as a co-author of the IG Post and therefore cannot be considered a benign user under the CDA.

(I’m not sure the “benign user” term improves the Section 230 jurisprudence, but it might make a good band name).

The court describes Section 230’s limits:

It is true that CDA immunity generally applies to reposting content, as many courts have concluded that private individuals reposting are “users.” See, e.g., Life Mastery Network LLC v. Haygarth, 2026 WL 1622887, at *15-16 (D. Haw. May 22, 2026) (collecting cases). But the CDA does not immunize someone who posts original content, so “it makes sense that adding comments to something that is re-posted would not trigger CDA immunity.” As the Plaintiff pleads it, CAIR Foundation did not simply reshare the WSB-TV segment, nor was it just a tagged user in CAIR Georgia’s post. Instead, it co-authored and published a post to its own Instagram page. Even assuming, as CAIR Foundation alleges, that it did not contribute to authoring the post, it at minimum accepted the collaboration invitation from CAIR Georgia knowing it would be tagged as a collaborator with the post published on its own Instagram profile. Moreover, the IG Post did not “merely share” the WSB-TV segment, but included additional commentary in the caption, with comments from CAIR Georgia on the post sharing links.

These factual allegations are enough to overcome a Section 230 defense now. The court says “a jury could find that CAIR Foundation was responsible in part for the creation or development of the IG Post, including the added commentary.”

* * *

I don’t use Instagram, so this is my first time encountering the Collabs feature (though I’ve occasionally experimented with analogous functionality on other services). It makes me wonder how extensively the Collabs tool is used. I did find one other case mentioning the Collabs tool: Kennedy v. Prime Hydration, LLC, 2026 WL 2018652 (W.D. Ky. July 13, 2026) (the facts are too complicated to cover here). However, I did a search in Westlaw’s Law Reviews and Journals database and found only one mention of Instagram Collabs in that literature (in the footnotes of a 2025 student note). Given the novelty of the Collabs angle, I think this case breaks some new ground.

At the same time, this is a reimagining of the issues I was trying to cover in my Co-Blogging Law paper from over 20 years ago. The Internet enables new forms of joint or collaborative content creation and dissemination that overlay existing legal doctrines. In that paper, I wrote: “The law inevitably will blindside some of these co-bloggers. Bloggers may find unexpected liability for their co-bloggers’ posts or actions.” Here, the court says that CAIR Foundation may become a co-author of the Instagram post (at least for defamation purposes), even if CAIR Foundation did nothing other than accept the Collabs invitation and allow CAIR Georgia’s content to reach its audience. In that circumstance, Section 230 steps aside for the co-authored components, whether CAIR Foundation expected it or not. If you are considering using a Collabs functionality, be aware of these risks.

Still, I think Section 230 continues to cast a long shadow on the plaintiff’s allegations. Even though the Collabs feature presents the defendants as co-authors, they might still not be liable for each other’s contributions. It’s analogous to how an online publisher can extensively edit a third-party’s work and, per Section 230, still not become liable for the parts the publisher didn’t edit. In other words, the public-facing co-author characterization doesn’t end the inquiry.Thus, regardless of the labeling, the plaintiff will need to show that CAIR Foundation contributed to the creation or development of defamatory content. That kind of factual inquiry sounds like a typical jury question.

Case Citation: Winer v. Mohammad, 2026 WL 2523973 (N.D. Ga. August 26, 2026)

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