University of Idaho history professor Rebecca Scofield — who won a $10 million federal defamation judgment against a Houston TikTok "psychic" who falsely accused her, in over a hundred videos viewed by millions of people, of orchestrating the quadruple murder of four undergraduate students she had never met — published a New York Times op-ed Monday calling for reform of Section 230, the federal law that shields social media platforms from liability for the content their algorithms amplify.
Scofield, 41, first learned that Ashley Guillard was posting videos accusing her of directing the November 2022 murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin on Thanksgiving — less than two weeks after the killings. In her op-ed, Scofield provided raw detail about what followed: she testified at trial that she went and laid in her son's bed the night she discovered the videos, sitting at the end of his bed all night and watching him sleep because his room was closest to an entrance to the house and she was afraid. Over subsequent weeks, Guillard posted more than a hundred additional videos making the same false accusations, which received millions of views. Scofield was overwhelmed with threatening messages, stopped attending her classes, and found herself patrolling the hallway outside her children's rooms at night. Guillard continued posting even after Scofield's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist, even after Moscow police publicly stated Scofield was not a suspect, and even after police arrested Bryan Kohberger for the crimes. A federal jury ultimately awarded Scofield $10 million in her defamation lawsuit. Guillard has appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
"Even though these outrageous claims were made online by someone I had never met, they were amplified by unsuspecting viewers and algorithm-driven platforms, and the harm seeped into every aspect of my life. Even after the actual murderer was arrested and convicted, the accusations against me continued." — Rebecca Scofield, New York Times op-ed, October 12, 2026
Scofield's central argument is that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — which provides online platforms with immunity from most defamation and civil liability for user-generated content — creates a structural asymmetry that leaves individuals like her with only one avenue for accountability: suing the individual who posted the content, not the platform whose algorithm delivered it to millions. Guillard, a 41-year-old who had no professional qualifications as a psychic, investigator, or journalist, was the only liable party in Scofield's case. TikTok, whose recommendation algorithm drove millions of views to Guillard's false videos, faced no liability under current law. Scofield's proposed remedy is not to eliminate Section 230 but to reform it — through exceptions for extreme defamation cases or through provisions requiring platforms to bear some responsibility when their algorithmic amplification of false content causes demonstrable harm to private individuals.
The Section 230 reform debate is genuinely complicated, and Scofield's case illustrates both the strongest argument for reform and one of its inherent tensions. The argument for reform: a platform that actively promotes content through algorithmic recommendation has done something meaningfully different from a passive bulletin board hosting content it didn't curate or amplify. The tension: any liability standard that makes platforms responsible for third-party content will produce more content moderation, and more content moderation means more platform power over what views can reach audiences — an outcome that conservatives who have criticized social media for perceived political bias should weigh carefully before assuming Section 230 reform would produce outcomes they prefer.
Bryan Kohberger, the Washington State University criminology PhD student arrested for the November 2022 murders of the four University of Idaho students, admitted to the killings in July 2025 and was sentenced to life in prison. He has since sought to withdraw his guilty plea, and a court hearing on that motion is pending. Rebecca Scofield is the chair of the History Department at the University of Idaho and holds a PhD from Harvard University. Ashley Guillard built her TikTok following through tarot card readings and true crime commentary. Her appeal of the $10 million defamation judgment is pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Rebecca Scofield's story is not primarily a story about Section 230 or social media policy. It is a story about what it costs a private individual — a history professor, a mother, someone with no connection to a crime she had never heard of — to be falsely accused of mass murder in front of millions of people by someone with a smartphone and a TikTok account. The law eventually gave her $10 million and the designation of defamation victim. It did not give her back the nights she spent standing guard over her sleeping children. The question her op-ed raises — whether platforms that profit from amplifying content that destroys private lives should bear any accountability for doing so — is one that deserves a serious answer that goes beyond the standard talking points on either side.