The US Supreme Court on Thursday refused to clear the way for victims of attacks by militant organizations to hold social media companies accountable under an anti-terrorism law for failing to prevent groups from using their platforms, handing a Twitter a win.
The court, in a separate case involving Google LLC, has challenged an attempt to undermine legal protections for Internet companies.
The judges, with a 9 to 0 ruling, overturned a lower court decision that had revived a lawsuit against Twitter brought by the American relatives of Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian killed in an attack in 2017 during the New Year’s celebrations. by the Islamic State.
The case was one of two the Supreme Court has considered in its current term, seeking to hold Internet companies accountable for controversial content posted by users — an issue of growing concern to the public and US lawmakers.
Judges Thursday in a similar case against YouTube, owned by Google LLC, part of Alphabet, refrained from ruling on an attempt to limit a federal law that protects Internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by its users, called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Judges, in a brief, unsigned ruling, remanded to a lower court a lawsuit filed by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old California college student who was shot and killed in a statewide attack. Islamic in Paris in 2015. court had dismissed the lawsuit.
The January 1, 2017 Istanbul massacre killed Alassaf and 38 others. His relatives accused Twitter of aiding and abetting the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack, by not checking the platform for the group’s accounts or posts, violating a federal law called the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows Americans to claim damages. damages related to “an act of international terrorism”.
Twitter and its supporters said allowing lawsuits like this would threaten internet companies with responsibility for providing widely available services to billions of users because some of them may be members of militant groups, even as the platforms regularly enforce anti-content policies. related to Twitter. terrorism.
The case was about whether the family’s claims were sufficient to allege that the company was knowingly providing “substantial assistance” to an “act of international terrorism” that would have enabled the relatives to pursue the lawsuit and seek compensation under the anti-terrorism law .
After a judge dismissed the lawsuit, the San Francisco-based 9th US Court of Appeals in 2021 allowed the case to proceed, holding that Twitter refused to take “significant steps” to prevent the use of the platform by the Islamic State.
Conservative Judge Clarence Thomas, who authored the decision, said the plaintiffs’ allegations were insufficient, as they did not indicate any act of encouragement, solicitation or advice to carry out the attack.
“Instead, they essentially portray the defendants as spectators, passively watching as ISIS (ISIS) carries out its nefarious plans,” Thomas added.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has backed Twitter, saying the Anti-Terrorism Act imposes responsibility for aiding a terrorist act, not for “providing widespread assistance to a foreign terrorist organization” with no causal link to l act in question.
In the Twitter case, the 9th court did not consider whether section 230 barred the family’s lawsuit. Google and Meta’s Facebook, also defendants, have not formally signed up to the Twitter feature.
Twitter said in court documents it had shut down more than 1.7 million accounts for violating rules against “threats or promoting terrorism.”
The case against Google concerned the scope of a 1996 US law called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides safeguards for “interactive computer services” ensuring they cannot be processed for lawful purposes as a “publisher or disseminator” of information provided by users.
The family claimed that YouTube provided illegal assistance to the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack, by recommending the militant group’s content to users.
In their brief ruling on Thursday, the judges wrote that they “refused to direct the application (of section 230) to a claim which appears to assert little or no implausible claim.”
Source: Terra
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