On Wednesday, Judge William Orrick of San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit that claimed Twitter had contributed to the deaths of two US defence contractors during a violent shooting spree in Jordan last year. The claim, brought against Twitter by a class action law firm, argued that Twitter contributed to the deaths by providing a platform for ISIS – which claimed responsibility for the attack – to coordinate its activities, spread propaganda messages, recruit new members and raise funds.
Neither speaker nor publisher
‘As horrific as these deaths were … Twitter cannot be treated as the publisher or the speaker of ISIS’s hateful rhetoric and is not liable under the facts alleged,’ ruled Orrick. His judgement cited the federal Communications Decency Act, which stipulates that content providers generally do not carry civil liability for content published by a third party. The complaint had relied upon two civil statutes – one passed in the early 1990s that creates a private civil cause of action for victims of terrorism, and another passed in the wake of the 1996 Oklahoma City bombings which makes it a federal crime to knowingly provide material support to terrorist organisations.
Ongoing criticism
Twitter has long been critiqued for its inability to meaningfully crack down on criminal and terrorist organisations using the platform to promote their activities. However, the argument that Twitter provides material support to terrorists by provisioning accounts to organisations and individuals is yet to win favour in the courts. Twitter has dismissed the suggestion that it is not doing enough to tackle the problem, reporting that it once forcibly closed as many as 10,000 accounts in a single day.
Sources: Wall Street Journal; The Verge
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