Twitter Sued For Giving Voice To Islamic State (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: An American woman named Tamara Fields has sued Twitter in U.S. federal court, saying the social network gave the Islamic State a voice to spread its propaganda. Fields's husband died on November 9, when the terrorist organization attacked a police training center in Amman, Jordan. The complaint alleges, "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible." At the end of 2015, Twitter stepped up its efforts (or at least its official policies) to block such content from its site. But the company has been under fire for over a year from citizens and law enforcement officials over the activity of various terrorist groups on its platform. Fields's attorneys hope that her husband's death will give her proper standing to challenge Twitter in court.

Comments

The enemy of my enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

Suing an online commentary platform for allowing comments is ridiculous. However, anything that damages social media is welcome as far as I'm concerned.

It will be a glorious day when Twitter and the rest of its ilk disappear into history just like myspace.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

She can't get money from suing ISIS. But she possibly can get money from suing Twitter.

Corollary to the Golden Rule: he who has the gold gets sued.
 

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the corporation knew what their network was being used for, is your argument that they are entitled to profit from users (the "product") from using their network to organize the killing of others?

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Hobadee]

Hey, don't take away my Twitter! It's how I know if the train is on time or not! (And incidentally the only reason I got an account.)

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[GrumpySteen]

One of these is true:

1) Twitter employees read every one of the 500 million tweets per day that get posted and agree with the content of them all.

2) You're making accusations despite having both a complete lack of evidence and a complete lack of understanding of the subject.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[ArmoredDragon]

Believe it or not, there's actually a legal precedent for this:

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08...

Probably a lot more too.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Gr8Apes]

That's commercial speech, not quite the same thing as non-commercial or political speech, as the linked article states. Accepting payment for publishing a bit of speech is different than providing a general platform for people to speak. I'd say first amendment principles apply here, although if it is ruled that the material posted in the accounts in question run afoul of laws, then she may have the basis for a lawsuit. (IANAL etc etc etc)

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Grishnakh]

Bad comparisons IMO. There's two measures you can look at to see if a company has responsibility for the bad uses of its product: if the product is used frequently for nefarious purposes (meaning: is there really a problem?), and how feasible it is for the company to keep its product out of the hands of evil-doers.

First, with hardware and grocery stores, those supplies have other, non-nefarious purposes which they are used for 99.99999% of the time. It's extremely rare that people buy supplies at those places to build bombs. The last time I think I heard about someone building actual bombs from supplies from grocery and hardware stores, it involved an assassin android sent from the future to 1984.

For Swith & Wesson, while guns certainly are designed to be efficient killing machines, and they are used for bad things too often (unlike home-made pipe bombs), the gun companies, through their dealers (who they're required to sell through by federal law), DO take steps to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands: they use federal instant background checks, again mandated by federal law and using a federally-run system, to make sure that blacklisted people can't buy a gun. As far as I'm concerned, the gunmakers have had this problem solved for them by the government itself taking on that responsibility; if the government doesn't think its own background check is sufficient, then the government needs to improve its own checking system.

In the case of Twitter, it appears that there has been a BIG problem with terrorist groups using them for propaganda, and that they've done little to nothing about it even though everyone knew about it. That to me shows that they are certainly culpable in a civil suit. By comparison, would terrorist videos uploaded to YouTube stay up there very long, or their accounts be allowed to persist? I don't think so.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[EmeraldBot]

Bad comparisons IMO. There's two measures you can look at to see if a company has responsibility for the bad uses of its product: if the product is used frequently for nefarious purposes (meaning: is there really a problem?), and how feasible it is for the company to keep its product out of the hands of evil-doers.

First, with hardware and grocery stores, those supplies have other, non-nefarious purposes which they are used for 99.99999% of the time. It's extremely rare that people buy supplies at those places to build bombs. The last time I think I heard about someone building actual bombs from supplies from grocery and hardware stores, it involved an assassin android sent from the future to 1984.

For Swith & Wesson, while guns certainly are designed to be efficient killing machines, and they are used for bad things too often (unlike home-made pipe bombs), the gun companies, through their dealers (who they're required to sell through by federal law), DO take steps to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands: they use federal instant background checks, again mandated by federal law and using a federally-run system, to make sure that blacklisted people can't buy a gun. As far as I'm concerned, the gunmakers have had this problem solved for them by the government itself taking on that responsibility; if the government doesn't think its own background check is sufficient, then the government needs to improve its own checking system.

In the case of Twitter, it appears that there has been a BIG problem with terrorist groups using them for propaganda, and that they've done little to nothing about it even though everyone knew about it. That to me shows that they are certainly culpable in a civil suit. By comparison, would terrorist videos uploaded to YouTube stay up there very long, or their accounts be allowed to persist? I don't think so.

Arguably, news networks have done the same thing, for giving those horrid bastards so much news coverage (Unlike many nowadays, I have no problem with muslims or people from the middle east, just those who support Daesh). There are over 500 million tweets per day; are you suggesting Twitter hire a 10th of the US population to read and moderate Twitter, and aside of the absurdity of this, that they're will be no abuse?

I'm sure they do the best they can, but at the end of the day, there is no machine that can moderate human disscussion to even a so-so degree. This lady isn't going to be able to change or influence anything, no amount of money is going to be able to change the fact a computer cannot help with problems that cannot be solved by a turing machine. And I bet you she knows it; she's simply trying to squeeze money out of her husband's death, an act that I find despicable.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Falconhell]

You mean like the incitement to violence that the US indulged in the lead up to the war in Iraq?
Ah, only when others do it, gotcha.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[stdarg]

That's the only difference huh, not the sex slaves that ISIS has, the people they burn in cages, the children they have participate in beheadings, the islamic motivation of the group, and so on? That's all about the same to you? So edgy, much wow.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[reboot246]

Why hire humans when a computer can do the job? Sure, there would be some false positives, but that's where humans can discern the difference.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Grishnakh]

No, you're not. You're talking about the Iraq War, which happened well over a decade ago. I'm in the US too and never supported that war either, so why the fuck are you complaining to me about it?

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[EmeraldBot]

Why hire humans when a computer can do the job? Sure, there would be some false positives, but that's where humans can discern the difference.

Why don't you go ahead and prototype the kind of AI required for this? Show us all how easy it is.

Exactly. False positives is the least of your worries, getting even a remotely accurate scanner would require resources far beyond what we have today, and it'd still never be nearly decent. Humans aren't a good judge either, because what's extremist for one person is not for another. There is no easy solution to this, no matter how much you wish to believe there is.

Something I intentionally left out of my last post, that I hoped you pounce on, is the freedom of speech though. Twitter is a platform for discussion, much like writing a letter or email is: if I advocated we moderate letters, you wouldn't be angry? Extremist speech still falls under free speech, much like neo nazi speech does in the US. I'm surprised by how quickly everybody here is to throw that out: after all the examples proven in humanity's history, after all the rhetoric about how horrible China's great firewall and censoring policy is, this is how the United States' citizens react? By simply censoring what they say?

Don't get me wrong, terrorists are horrible people and we will all be better off when they burn in Islam's version of hell, but I am remarkably surprised at how easy freedom of speech goes out the window when it concerns foreigners. We know what we say and how we live is a better way to live than what the terrorists say, so why are people like you so jumpy about it? Are you afraid of their propaganda? Is the crap they spew going to cross the ocean and kill you?

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[penix1]

Something I intentionally left out of my last post, that I hoped you pounce on, is the freedom of speech though. Twitter is a platform for discussion, much like writing a letter or email is: if I advocated we moderate letters, you wouldn't be angry? Extremist speech still falls under free speech, much like neo nazi speech does in the US. I'm surprised by how quickly everybody here is to throw that out: after all the examples proven in humanity's history, after all the rhetoric about how horrible China's great firewall and censoring policy is, this is how the United States' citizens react? By simply censoring what they say?

I will address your questions first. You are comparing apples to oranges. The great firewall of China is an attempt to censor disagreement with the state and not with organizing the killing people. Isis sole use of the Twitter platform is for recruitment and organization of murderers.

Your right to free speech ends where another persons rights begin. And honestly, I put a higher priority rights wise to life than I do to speech.

Re: The enemy of my enemy

[Grishnakh]

Hitler was the product of US involvement in WWI, and actually the US Civil War. Does that mean we're responsible for the Holocaust?

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[_KiTA_]

One of these is true:

1) Twitter employees read every one of the 500 million tweets per day that get posted and agree with the content of them all.

2) You're making accusations despite having both a complete lack of evidence and a complete lack of understanding of the subject.

BZZT. That's a 10 yard penalty for a False Dilemma fallacy. Try again.

3) People have reported the offending content and Twitter left it up in the name of free speech -- while punishing people who disagree with fake feminist con artists like Zoe Quin or Brianna Wu, because "freeze peach" is so 1990s.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[guises]

The specific limitations of commentary platforms encourage certain types of communication. Twitter's 140 character limit allows for no nuance and seems to only support only the kind of jingoism which leads to extreme positions online, coming out in the form of endless flame wars, and I can certainly see how it could play some role in promoting extreme positions offline as well.

I blame Twitter for a large share of Gamergate, for example.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[ameoba]

It's ilk like Slashdot?

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Grishnakh]

I'm touchy because I never voiced any support for my country's actions, so I resent that somehow I'm assumed to.

So, NO, the criticism is not valid at all. It's no different than criticizing gangsta rap to some random black person. Or worse, saying "your country sucks because its cops shoot unarmed black people" to a black American who got shot or beaten by the cops.'

Re: The enemy of my enemy

[Gr8Apes]

Or was that Russian military adventurism?

Or, perhaps, it was merely the result of the ever volatile issues affecting the differing people, cultures, and beliefs that comprise the middle east? It is not like the genocidal barbarism just started in the past 10, 50, or even 200 years.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Hognoxious]

OK, rewrite the first one as:

"Twitter employees read every one of the 250 million tweets per day that some shitcock somewhere whined about for some reason and agree with the content of them all."

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Grishnakh]

I completely disagree. He was criticizing me personally because I was criticizing ISIS and calling their propaganda incitement to violence. You can think that's a fallacy if you want, I don't care.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[scarboni888]

I'm sorry you're right. There is a difference I recognize: The one's currently in control have historically been and currently are responsible for far more violence and its attendant miseries than some currently sensationalist fundamentalist groups who may have different methods you like to point to as being a reason for passing judgement as a 'lesser' form of violence. Groups that, ironically enough, exist in large part as a result of Western hegemonies' full of itself.

Go live somewhere there's drones chronically flying over your head day and night keeping you indoors on sunny days because that's usually when they like to 'mow the lawn' and see how long YOU are able to remain 'civilized'.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Pseudonym]

I just hope that Twitter argues in court that the US government carries most of the responsibility for causing the rise of ISIS.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Falconhell]

Australia asshole, we don't Star Wars, were just stupid enough to follow the US into them, though we just refused any further involvement in your current war for profit.

Re: The enemy of my enemy

[Falconhell]

Yep, if you hadn't done your usual stunt of staying out until as much profit as possible had been made, the war would have been a lot shorter. America is directly responsible for much of the terrorism in the world thru it's actions supporting terrosits in many many countries, and it's repeated meddling in places where they have no business.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Falconhell]

Oh yes, criticising deluded assholes is a bonus, but not the first intent.
You are reaping what you sowed.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Grishnakh]

Ah yes, you're the morons who couldn't even win a war against some birds.

And the country that treated Aborigines worse than dirt.

You're pathetic.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Falconhell]

Ah, yes from the country that treated the natives far worse, and is the most greedy ignorant and arrogant dumbfucks on the planet. Add the relevant B and your UI is most accurate.

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[_KiTA_]

OK, rewrite the first one as:

"Twitter employees read every one of the 250 million tweets per day that some shitcock somewhere whined about for some reason and agree with the content of them all."

Either/or fallacy -- and doesn't match Twitter's current policy. They claim to have rules, they're mostly secret and vague rules and won't explain when you break them, but will ban you outright when you cross them. But only if you don't have the right friends.

Disagree with a sociopath who happens to have the right politics? Ban.
Point out a con artist doing "good things" is lying and openly scamming people out of thousands? Ban.
Point out a troll who is harassing hundreds of people is a self admitted pedophile and child pornography producer? Ban.

Run the official PR campaign of a group of religious fundamentalists waging open war on non-theocratic civilization? ... *Crickets*

Re: The enemy of my enemy

[dl_sledding]

OK, so if the US gets involved late in the game, it's "your usual stunt of staying out until as much profit as possible had been made", not "attempting to defuse the situation using diplomacy via the UN".

If the US would have done something sooner, you would have been considered it a warmonger, right?

What-the-fuck-ever.

I do agree with your statement that the US meddles in lots of places that it shouldn't (the Middle East, Central America, SE Asia, etc.) And, that the US has trained peoples that have become it's enemy in the future (bin Laden, for example, and usually because of an action or inaction on the part of the US: we are not good at this type of thing). I think it's a bunch of BS saying that the US is "protecting it's interests" - not that the interests don't exist, but the US has the RIGHT to do this, unless specifically asked by the world (ie: UN). If a US corporation is in trouble in a foreign country, IMO that's just tough luck, it was a gamble that was lost. So sad, too bad. Part of the game of business. It's not a US interest at that point, unless an extrapolation is made, which does not justify it.

HOWEVER, I also believe that the US has helped many, many people in many situations (or, at least, tried to). The US stayed out of WWII until it was dragged, kicking and screaming, into it via Pearl Harbor, even after much of Europe begged the US for action and help previously. Even though it's "interests" would have been better served by entering earlier (helping it's allies when asked). There is no doubt that the US ultimately tilted the balance in the Allied's favor, and an Axis win would have been devastating to US "interests". Was that "staying out until as much profit as possible had been made"?

So, what is the proper action? Get in early and help allies, or stay out until forced? Because by your statements, there is no correct choice, and no matter what the US does, it's wrong. Go ahead, give me the "right" answer here, and let me know where you're from so that your country's actions can also be analyzed...

Re:The enemy of my enemy

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Well, Twitter does have rules against inciting violence. Presumably some of the ISIS-affiliated accounts do that. She might have standing to sue based on harm done to her because they weren't enforcing their own rules.

Re: The enemy of my enemy

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

The American public didn't want to get involved in WWI. As for profit... Countries wanted to buy stuff from us. We were willing to sell it to them. We didn't want to fight at the point because it really wasn't our business; are you for or against American military intervention? You say America meddles in places it has no business, and I agree. Europe during WWI was a place the US had no business being. You can't say "you should have joined the war sooner" and "stop meddling in things" in the same comment and expect people to take you seriously.

What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

We should sue the courts for giving this lunatic a voice.

Re:What's next?

[khasim]

Yeah. I'm guessing "fuck free speech if I can get some money".

Also:

The complaint alleges, "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible."

1. "most-feared" is more about the news agencies reporting. Statistically you are in more danger from your own family/friends.

2. Al-Qaeda used to be "the most-feared" and they managed it without Twitter.

3. Finally, what evidence does she have that those specific terrorists actually used Twitter to recruit/plan/whatever? As opposed to, say, text messages.

Re:What's next?

[ArmoredDragon]

1. "most-feared" is more about the news agencies reporting. Statistically you are in more danger from your own family/friends.

Umm...That really, heavily, depends on where you live. In this case it was Jordan. Big difference than in the US.

2. Al-Qaeda used to be "the most-feared" and they managed it without Twitter.

Al Qaeda never managed to establish a caliphate.

3. Finally, what evidence does she have that those specific terrorists actually used Twitter to recruit/plan/whatever? As opposed to, say, text messages.

Considering that it's well known to be their primary recruitment platform (even by their own admission,) I'm sure you can find plenty.

Re:What's next?

[amiga3D]

Especially number 1. I have zero fear of ISIS but there are some local threats that cause me to carry a pistol.

Re: What's next?

[timrod]

What proof does she have that her husband's killers were recruited by IS via Twitter? Absolutely none. Most of IS's recruiting is done physically in person, and for obvious reasons (Twitter is a hell of a lot easier for the NSA and military to track). Hell, almost every story I've heard about people joining IS is virtually the same: they met with a person at their mosque who saw them as an impressionable target and convinced them over a long period of time that they are being oppressed by the west and need to fight back.

Most of what IS posts on Twitter is not meant for their own members but to instill fear in the people they consider their enemies.

Re:What's next?

[R3d M3rcury]

Statistically you are in more danger from your own family/friends.

Especially children. Won't somebody think of them?

Re:What's next?

[ClickOnThis]

Yeah. I'm guessing "fuck free speech if I can get some money".

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with this.

The first (free speech) amendment of the US Constitution protects you and me from the government. It does not protect you and me from each other.

This is a civil lawsuit between this woman and Twitter.

Re:What's next?

[blind biker]

At first it may seem lunacy, except for the fact that Twitter does ban accounts in a very selective way - unfortunately for Twitter, there is a very well documented trend of banning accounts critical of Islam. For this very reason Twitter made themselves very susceptible to this lawsuit.

Re:What's next?

[James Kilton]

2. Al-Qaeda used to be "the most-feared" and they managed it without Twitter.

Al Qaeda never managed to establish a caliphate.

Al Qaeda never established a caliphate because Osama bin Laden explicitly prohibited them doing so. When we killed him, a group broke off from Al Qaeda who wanted a caliphate, the group we now know as Islamic State.

Re: What's next?

[thegarbz]

Most of IS's recruiting is done physically in person, and for obvious reasons (Twitter is a hell of a lot easier for the NSA and military to track).

The FBI, the government, some analysts, and ISIS's own messages on Twitter disagree with you. Also the link below explains why no, the NSA can't reliability track this process. You're right eventually you meet in person, but that's just like any other job interview. The first place you hear from it is typically in a paper, then you apply via an agency, and you don't actually meet someone until the last part of your recruitment process.

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/0...

FBI Director James Comey described ISIS’s Twitter strategy at the Aspen Institute in July:

“ISIL’s M.O. is they broadcast on Twitter, get people to follow them, then move them to Twitter Direct Messaging while they evaluate whether they’re a potential liaison either to travel or to kill where they are. Then they’ll move them to an encrypted mobile-messaging app, so they go dark to us.”

Re: What's next?

[cold fjord]

Hell, almost every story I've heard about people joining IS is virtually the same: they met with a person at their mosque who saw them as an impressionable target and convinced them over a long period of time that they are being oppressed by the west and need to fight back.

If that is all you've heard then it would appear you've never bothered to actually try to find out what is really going on, and don't pay attention to the news. To miss the internet as a recruiting tool in the age of the internet is stunning, almost unbelievable.

Internet making it easier to become a terrorist

"The new militancy is driven by the Web," agreed Fawaz A. Gerges, a terrorism expert at the London School of Economics. "The terror training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being replaced by virtual camps on the Web."

From their side, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are scrambling to monitor the Internet and penetrate radical websites to track suspects, set up sting operations or unravel plots before they are carried out.

The FBI arrested LaRose in October after she had spent months using e-mail, YouTube, MySpace and electronic message boards to recruit radicals in Europe and South Asia to "wage violent jihad," according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.

That put the strawberry-haired Pennsylvania resident in league with many of the 12 domestic terrorism cases involving Muslims that the FBI disclosed last year, the most in any year since 2001. The Internet was cited as a recruiting or radicalizing tool in nearly every case.

"Basically, Al Qaeda isn't coming to them," Gerges said. "They are using the Web to go to Al Qaeda."

In December, for example, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of seeking to join anti-American militants in Afghanistan.

A Taliban recruiter made contact with the group after one of the five, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, posted comments on YouTube praising videos of attacks on U.S. troops, officials said. To avoid detection, they communicated by leaving draft e-mail messages at a shared Yahoo e-mail address.

The Internet and its Role in Terrorist Recruitment and Operational Planning

Al-Shabab Recruits in the United States and the Pakistan-Virginia Case

In November 2009, federal authorities unsealed terrorism-related charges against men they say were key actors in a recruitment drive that led young Somali-Americans to join al-Shabab, a Somali insurgent group and an al-Qa`ida affiliate. In total, authorities have implicated 14 people in the case. Perhaps the most notorious is Zakaria Maruf, an American-Somali who had left Minnesota for southern Somalia to link up with al-Shabab and subsequently recruited men from the United States through a variety of means, including the internet.[33]

This was the case of Mohamoud Hassan, a student at the Carlson School of Management, whose path toward extremism began through the internet with searches for jihadist videos and jihadist chat rooms. Like the Toronto 18, Hassan listened to the audio lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki.[34] Hassan then began to communicate frequently with Maruf who established contact through listservs, an antiquated form of sending e-mails, and conference calls arranged by an associate who distributed several hundred numbers and passwords so people could establish contact securely.[35]

In November 2008, Hassan turned his back on a university education and with two other students left for Somalia to join an al-Shabab training camp where he linked up with his internet recruiter Maruf.[36] In September 2009, Hassan’s grandmother received news from Somalia that her grandson was killed. It is unlikely that he will be the last S

Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[Meshach]

Twitter recently banned promotion of violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease. This lawsuit might be about Twitter not following through (IANAL nor have I RTFA).

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[BrookHarty]

Thing about bans, they still need to be evenly enforced, and twitter seems to selectively enforcing their rules. Facebook is currently in a lawsuit over this for allowing "kill Israelis" pages and only banning "kill Arabs" pages. Companies are not evenly enforcing their policies and actually being very offensive towards some groups.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[Sowelu]

Sounds like this lawsuit was filed about behavior before that TOS went into effect.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[msobkow]

No, this is in the US. It is fueled by one thing and one thing only: GREED.

Re: Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[ClickOnThis]

ISIS has most of the protections that SJWs have to attack, bully, etc.

I saw what you did there.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[AchilleTalon]

Sure, there is no greed outside US, everybody knows that.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[rtb61]

Twitter represents the digital infrastructure to allow a horde of mostly mindless feather brains to scream into the void from their digital perches. Twitter does not provide the voice, it purely provides the digital medium for you to hook up your digital device on the digital network you pay for. Policies will never been uniformly applied because Twitter only reacts to a sufficient number of shrill cries from it members. The more feather brains that squawk about something annoying them, the more likely Twitter is to make an adjustment, well, let's be blunt, to stop them squawking on a particular subject.

Seriously who the hell possibly thinks that twitter could ever pay enough people to read and audit every single idiot feather brained squawk on twitter or even every single complain, don't like what twitter writes, stop reading it, I don't. Seriously the birds in my neighbourhood make enough noise every day I don't need to hear any more of it ;D.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[SvnLyrBrto]

The problem is the scale of the problem. Twitter has, in fact, disabled plenty of accounts. But it's a frikkin gigantic service. How many millions of Twitter accounts are there? How many millions of tweets go out per day? And you have so sort through all of that to find the ISIS accounts and tweets.

To do it algorithmically, you need to write software that can reliably identify... with a minimum of false positives, mind you... the genuine ISIS users from: people talking about ISIS, people reporting on ISIS, people mocking ISIS, trolls, and vi users calling for jiyhad against the emacs infidel. That is a non-trivial problem.

To do it manually, you'd need an enormous staff to go through the haystack looking for the needle. These would have to be bilingual in english and arabic and wouldn't come cheap; so you couldn't go to the usual outsourcing outfits in India or the Philippines.

Either way, it's a significant cost with no potential revenue. So Twitter is, no doubt, going the route of having users report accounts, reviewing (which like still takes bilingual staff), and terminating accounts. What else can they realistically do?

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[PopeRatzo]

First the SJWs went after gamers. Then they went after @nero. Now they're going after ISIS.

Damn them all to hell.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[PopeRatzo]

Sure, there is no greed outside US, everybody knows that.

There's greed everywhere. We just do it better than everybody else.

Re: Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[Mashiki]

I saw what you did there.

While your average SJW isn't running around trying to kill someone, they are threatening, doxing, harassing and trying to get people fired from their job because they don't like what you say. Fun thing though, ISIS and SJW's in general use the same blockbot... You of course can't forget either the number of SJW's who either openly support, or opine support for ISIS either.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[wisnoskij]

None of those items apply in this situation, though......
ISIS does not have terrorist groups in America because they targeting some specific demographic. They do not care where you were born, or the colour of your skin, and they have killed loads of American Muslims. They just hate America, and Americans, which is a nationality and explicated left out of this list.

So Twitter recentally announced that you can promote violence against and Americans?

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[nbauman]

Facebook is currently in a lawsuit over this for allowing "kill Israelis" pages and only banning "kill Arabs" pages.

I couldn't find that with a Google search. Could you give me a source for that?

Re: Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[ClickOnThis]

Fun thing though, ISIS and SJW's in general use the same blockbot...

Your point?

You of course can't forget either the number of SJW's who either openly support, or opine support for ISIS either.

Citation?

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[cold fjord]

I believe the items below is what he was referring to. (Surely this sort of blatant ant-Israeli bias isn't new to you?)

Thousands of Israelis join lawsuit against Facebook over pages inciting violence
Facebook’s anti-Israel double standard on hate speech

Facebook and Israel: What’s Not to ‘Like’? Lots, It Seems

An experiment: Make one anti-Israel page and one anti-Palestinian page. Wait to see what happens. . . .

Shurat HaDin also posted graphic photos on both pages. For example, a photograph on the anti-Israel page featured a young girl preparing to punch an Israeli soldier, with text reading, “these children will liberate Palestine with blood.” That photograph was mirrored on the anti-Palestine page by a picture of a bare-chested Israeli soldier wielding a gun and vowing war with all Arabs.

On Dec. 30, Shurat HaDin reported both pages as violating Facebook standards, using Facebook’s report mechanism of a simple button-click available to all users. Within 24 hours, Facebook sent the NGO a message that the anti-Palestine page it reported had been closed down for “containing credible threat of violence” and that it had “violated our [Facebook’s] community standards.” The page immediately became inaccessible to all Facebook users.

The complaint about the anti-Israel page (which had spiraled into an explicitly anti-Jewish page) also received a reply from Facebook. This reply stated that the content was “not in violation of Facebook’s rules.”

Facebook changed its tune after Jan. 4, when Shurat HaDin published a video detailing the experiment, which made waves in the Israeli press and on social media.

Facebook Caves on Israel Hate Page

Exclusive: Social network rescinds earlier decision to allow page that incites violence . . . .

“Unfortunately we do not believe it was a simple ‘mistake’ as Israelis and Jews worldwide have been relentlessly protesting that Facebook is completely unresponsive to this type of Palestinian incitement to violence,” said Shurat HaDin founder and Israeli attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. “Two months ago we filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of over 20,000 Israeli citizens, seeking an injunction against Facebook for “intentionally disregarding the widespread incitement and calls for murder of Jews being posted on its web pages by Palestinians. This simple experiment and its results speak for themselves.”

Israeli NGO says Facebook test proves anti-Israel bias

An experiment by the Israel Law Center sees the social network banning anti-Palestinian incitement, while anti-Israel hate remains online

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[cold fjord]

No, this is in the US. It is fueled by one thing and one thing only: GREED.

It seems to be that it may very well be about the results of politically correct behavior on the part of social media that tends to ignore violence and threats as long as it comes from the "right" people or is directed at the "right" victims. There are other cases like it that help demonstrate the problem.

Facebook and Israel: What’s Not to ‘Like’? Lots, It Seems

An experiment: Make one anti-Israel page and one anti-Palestinian page. Wait to see what happens.

After all, youtube didn't pick up the nickname of "jihad tube" for nothing.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[Alumoi]

Children's first word in the rest of the world is not 'sue'.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[nbauman]

Oh, yes, Shurat HaDin, the Israel governent operation that brings frivolous lawsuits against critics of Israel.

This isn't a valid social science experiment, it's just lawyers and hasbara operatives gathering allegations to fill up the documents in what they openly admit are frivolous lawsuits to harass Palestinians and their supporters.

What they've proven is that Facebook is more likely to respond to a threatening picture of an adult with a gun than of a child with a slingshot. It would be interesting to see what kind of results a social scientist would get with matched photos.

I'm sure they know that this is a frivolous lawsuit in the US, where our free speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Of course, you can never tell what a judge or a jury in the Southern District of New York will do. So it does have some intimidation value -- for suppressing free speech.

Palestinians who try to sue the Israeli government for its illegal killings don't get anywhere.

It's like the mice trying to sue the cats with a judge and jury of cats.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[Aristos Mazer]

This is why bans on any form of speech are a bad idea. They inevitably end up imbalanced and biased at some point. Even something as simple as "no messages calling for anyone to be killed" are hard to apply to posts like "He should be removed from office by any means necessary." Is that a death threat? Should it be censored by the calls to be killed? These subjective calls are impossible for a neutral third party to apply -- they end up taking sides, and when your communication medium takes sides, then they can be bought or controlled by one side. That's when free speech ends.

Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS

[Jason Levine]

And even if you terminate an account, it's trivial for the person or people behind it to set up another account. I've experienced this personally. A person was harassing me and a bunch of other people on Twitter so we reported her. Her account was banned. She started a new account and harassed us again. We reported her again and she was banned again. She made a new account again, etc. The cycle would repeat sometimes dozens of times a day. In fact, she's still on Twitter today (though she's backed off from harassing me for the moment).

This is for a woman with obvious mental issues (she believes that god talks to her, tells her crimes people commit, and she threatens to report people to the police on Twitter) and very little technical skills. Imagine if you had a technical organization backing your behavior. If they banned the e-mail account you signed up with, it would be trivial to get others. If they banned your IP address, it would be easy to use VPNs or compromised computers to get around that ban. In short, Twitter could kick you out, but there's no way to stop you from waltzing right back in.

Hmmmm....

[Brostenen]

So... Let me get this straight! If her husband was killed in an auto accident instead Would she then sue those who build the road? Or would she sue those who build the car that drove into her husband? Why, when she actually sue's twitter. Why would she not sue those who created the internet? Twitter can't be held reliable for this. They are after all doing something as of now.

Re:Hmmmm....

[rmdingler]

Well, now you're just being silly with your uncommon sense.

Caruso style!

Re:Hmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

If they coordinated their attacks with the spoken word, whom would she sue?

How about writing each other using a quality Bic pen available at your local Walmart in a variety of colors? Whom would she sue then?

Re:Hmmmm....

[AchilleTalon]

It all depends if the accident occurs because of the road, the car or both. You should be allowed to sue. It doesn't mean at all you should win everytime you sue.

Re:Hmmmm....

[AchilleTalon]

...occurred...

Re:Hmmmm....

[CanadianMacFan]

I think the analogy goes ISIS grew because of Twitter and the car accident wouldn't have happened because it would had been driven if the road didn't exist. Of course with that analogy the woman should sue computer, OS, and phone makers, telcos, and electric companies for letting ISIS having an audience.

Re:Hmmmm....

[Hoorayforthings]

The internet doesn't work with out electricity...sue Benjamin Franklin!

Let's not forget...

[Onuma]

...to sue the air for carrying wireless messages, and the photons of light which transmit via fiber optic glass...and the glass too!

One Word...

[Revarg]

Good.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

She should sue all the telecoms who own the networks that this traffic was sent over while she's at it!

So stupid, 'Shoot the Messenger'

[ArcWild]

So again, we have another semi-intelligent person angry about not-even-new technologies that allow people to communicate with the broader World.....

Yes, it can be used for hate or trolling, but hey, you enjoy Free Speech right? (Or as much as we have in the modern World)

I hate to hear about BS like this.........sue anything you can for monetary gain and for personal reasons..........I'd say 'gtfo' lol

Re:So stupid, 'Shoot the Messenger'

[Anonymous Coward]

So again, we have another semi-intelligent person angry about not-even-new technologies that allow people to communicate with the broader World.....

That's giving them WAY too much credence. I'd go with non-intelligent. The constant demands from these "people" can be summed up as follows:

"We only want to hear / see / otherwise come into contact with things that we approve of, and if we come into contact with something that does not meet that criteria, then it must be destroyed and it's creator punished."

This is blatant oppression and authoritarianism. Something that the US's founders not only fled but created the US to escape from. (Granted it was for religious freedom but the point still stands.) These SJWs and others like them want to outright destroy one of the founding principals of the country they live in, just because it's currently inconvenient for them. Not realizing just how much they are currently benefiting from it. Indeed, without the first amendment their own demands could be censored by the government easily. In fact their demands are outright against the state due to their nature, and could even be considered treasonous. Without the first amendment, I have the feeling that their demands would have been censored long before it gained the SJW moniker. Yet here they are demanding that the government ignore the first amendment that they are benefiting from, punish, censor, and bring retribution on an entity that only served as a messenger, NOT the source of the message.

These people (and especially the plaintiffs in this lawsuit) are out for retribution and revenge. They are the exact reason why the first amendment exists, to prevent punishment based solely on what is said or written. To protect the means of communication so that ideas may flow freely without risk to those who distribute them. These people are idiots. They represent an alarming cancerous growth on the freedom of speech in this country, and I hope the judge laughs his ass off as he dismisses their case and walks back to his chambers.

Captcha: deleting. Even slashdot knows this comment is going straight to the -1 zone.....

Re:So stupid, 'Shoot the Messenger'

[khchung]

Actually, this is more like shooting the *train driver* for carrying the messenger on his train.

The messenger would be the ones who sent the tweet.

Re:So stupid, 'Shoot the Messenger'

[Alypius]

I'd mod you back up if I had points left. Still, cue the shrieks of "it doesn't violate the first amendment unless the government throws you in jaaaail!"

Re:So stupid, 'Shoot the Messenger'

[blind biker]

Unfortunately for Twitter, they have been shooting specific messengers already - banning accounts critical of Islam - and so they have a good chance of actually losing this lawsuit.

Understandable but totally misdirected

[kheldan]

Her grief and desire to fight back somehow is understandable and she has my sympathy, but sueing Twitter is utterly pointless and as misdirected as you can get. Twitter doesn't really have any effective control over user-generated content; herding a thousand ferrets on amphetamines would be an easier task than that.

All depends...

[no-body]

If people get activated, enticed, angry, violent from written word (pictures/videos), where is the problem?

The written word (pictures/videos) somewhere, or the readiness to fall for it and being unable see where this is coming from and leading to, needing a constant nurse to look after so they don't start killing each other. So it's a pretty hopeless situation.

Seems that's reality..

How so?

common sense

[piRSqrd]

In a world I could trust, I'd just assume the courts would kindly inform the woman that she has no case. She is grieving and in pain. Her reaction is part of the fallout of the terrorist act. We should act to support her despite the fact that she wants to sue a company that is clearly not responsible. Unfortunately, I fear the courts might support her suit. If she were to succeed and have a judgement rendered against twitter, I'd be furious. I wouldn't be furious at her, I'd be furious at the judge/court. When anything traumatic happens to someone, we should aim our frustrations with their situation at them. We should aim it at those who are in a position to help and guide and fail to do so. I would never be angry at a vet with PTSD for having violent nightmares.

The logic of "Fuck You"

[Required Snark]

She in understandably upset, but what she really wants to do is lash out at somebody. There has to be someone to blame, and there is no way for her to get at the real perps, so she (and her lawyers) go after a big name that everyone knows.

The magical landscape of the internet is a perfect place to project all that rage. The public has no clue about how it works or how it is controlled, so any claim about responsibility can seem credible. If she had sued Toyota because they seem to be the official truck of ISIS, everyone would know she was off base and acting irrationally. But you go after the likes of Twitter and it makes good headlines.

In some ways Twitter has set themselves up for this. Twitter, Facebook, and other such services want all the power and money that goes with being a de facto public utility like a phone company. Then want to avoid the rules that apply to common carriers because it would limit their behavior. If they had common carrier status it would protect them from this kind of law suit. They want it both ways: the reach of a public utility without any of the responsibility. The only good part of this whole mess is that they will have to deal with a publicity nightmare because of their greed and arrogance.

Re:The logic of "Fuck You"

[Required Snark]

I suggested a plausible scenario, and by contrasting suing Toyota with suing Twitter pointed out that her decision has an internal logic. I also framed my assertion by pointing out that she is unable to apply any legal pressure to the group who is really responsible. I backed up my analysis with reasonable arguments. To restate my position, she is going after a high profile target because she has no other way to act out her anger. Asserting that Twitter supports terrorism is a far reach of logic.

Your entire position is that I am wrong. That's it. No logic, no argument, no reference to any other circumstance. You can't "call me out" because we are not equals. I use logic and evidence to support my conclusion. You have no logic and present no evidence.

You are fighting way out of your weight class here. Step up your game, or else you just look foolish.

Re:The logic of "Fuck You"

[Aristos Mazer]

RequiredSnark, AC does have one good point -- your opening sentence is an assertion... needs an "I suspect" in there somewhere. She may not be upset at all... she might be coldly calculating after the death of a husband she didn't like in the first place the best way to make money from the bastard's passing. She might be blackmailed by some third party into launching this lawsuit and not really want to do it at all. She might have motivations that have nothing to do with Free Speech, the spread of ISIS, or any of the obvious ramifications of her lawsuit. IF she is acting out of anger and a need for revenge, then the rest of your comments apply.

And, by the way, "the official automobile company of ISIS" is a disturbing thought in some ways... ISIS has been very good at its branding messages. It wouldn't surprise me if they started trying to make such claims. Can you imagine how much damage ISIS could do to a company just by claiming "that's our favorite brand!" Propaganda is a fascinating weapon.

Re:The logic of "Fuck You"

[thegarbz]

so she (and her lawyers) go after a big name that everyone knows.

There's more to this than going after anyone with money. People have been fairly critical of Twitter's response to terrorism. Accounts suspended and then released, no attempts at blocking, no attempts at curating. They have a formal policy now, but that was only introduced after 4chan went all out exposing an incredible number of Twitter accounts used by ISIS, and now Twitter is saying they are actively doing something despite the face ISIS's activities and the scale of their activities on Twitter have been known from the beginning.

In many ways yes she's lashing out, but I don't shed a tear for Twitter who could have done a heck of a lot more than they have. Hell Facebook has put more effort into this, and that is really saying something.

Can the rest of the world sue this woman

[future assassin]

for allowing the US gov to spread democracy through force and allowing events that lead to the raise of terrorist groups?

Re:Can the rest of the world sue this woman

[PPH]

Sue Greece. They started all this democracy crap in the first place.

Re:Can the rest of the world sue this woman

[PPH]

A society based on slavery, in which about 10% had the vote

Less than 10% of the US population gives enough money to their legislators to effectively command their attention. For the rest of us, the whole representative dog and pony show is sufficient to keep us pacified. Instead of herding us into silver mines at the point of a spear, we play along. So yes, a democracy just like the Athenians.

All kinds of old stupidity

[istartedi]

Same old stupidity, to the point of being tiresome. Litigation lotto. Shooting the messenger. Breaking the honey-pot instead of shooting the bear. Etc., etc...

Re:To be fair

[Alypius]

Pretty much. I mean, why on earth would you be concerned with people throwing gays off rooftops when there's someone STILL saying "Bruce Jenner"??

"PostHe said on a public forum...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Heh. Yeah, blasting your opinions on social media is really lame. Thanks for posting on Slashdot so we can hear about it.

Next up...

[superdave80]

Who is she going to sue next? Mosques where radical muslims meet? Cell phone companies that allow them to [gasp] TALK to each other???? Or how about those suspicious e-mail providing companies?

This woman is an idiot.

Re:Next up...

[currently_awake]

This is why corporations need net neutrality. Info services should not be required to monitor their traffic, just respond to complaints. Anything else puts a massive strain and cost on business.

Money, money, money

[lolococo]

Must be funny
In the rich man's world

not sure

[superwiz]

Technically, speech can be protected, but a platform for disseminating speech? It didn't work for Napster. And since treason is defined as providing aid and comfort to the enemy and ISIL has declared itself to be at war with all western states, well, as absurd as it is, this case may have legs. I am not a lawyer though. So hopefully someone has a better way to defend the argument that censorship is not a good alternative to hateful.

Re:not sure

[Jason Levine]

It all depends on whether:

a) Twitter was alerted to the accounts and didn't shut them down.
and
b) the case is about the previous or about Twitter not shutting down accounts BEFORE being alerted to them.

Twitter can't be expected to see all tweets coming through and somehow determine which ones are bad and which aren't. Is the account saying "Death to America!" because they want to blow us up? Or is it saying that because it's some sort of in-joke between friends online? Software won't be able to tell and there's no way Twitter employees can read EVERY tweet.

This is exactly why the common carrier concept was formed. So that companies providing a method for communication don't get sued merely because of the existence of some bad speech on the platform.

Re:not sure

[superwiz]

Well, patterns in text are hardly as challenging to monitor as voice calls. So common carrier defense would not work. Twitter is the prime platform for farming financial sentiment data. It can certainly do enough automated filtering to reduce the info which gets twitted and is worth checking for terrorism advertising. This is no different than requiring safety standards from car manufacturers. In fact, it can be argued that much more unpredictability exists for a physical quickly-moving vehicle than for 140-character ascii text messages.

Here be dragons

[rakslice]

This case is a journey into barely touched judicial territory of things like civil aiding and abetting and first amendment civil law.

I think Americans' (rightful) pride in the First Amendment has blinded many to the fact that legislators have basically stopped paying attention to the whole area of speech, and so there's a huge amount we'll-know-it-when-we-see-it arbitrary case law around things like free vs. criminal speech, what speech acts are protected from civil liability, etc.

They should also sue Toyota

[TsuruchiBrian]

Isis uses Toyota trucks to go places. If Isis didn't have Toyota trucks, they'd have to walk everywhere and would not have been able to grow so quickly.

Re:They should also sue Toyota

[blind biker]

Does Totyota selectively sell cars to ISIS and not to Kurds or people critical of Islam? If that were true, you would have a point.

Re:They should also sue Toyota

[Fly Swatter]

Damn, that whoosh sound you just heard was louder than a leaf blower.

Re:They should also sue Toyota

[TsuruchiBrian]

Are you messing with me?

This is absolutely not about free speech

[cbraescu1]

I think Americans' (rightful) pride in the First Amendment has blinded many to the fact that legislators have basically stopped paying attention to the whole area of speech, and so there's a huge amount we'll-know-it-when-we-see-it arbitrary case law around things like free vs. criminal speech, what speech acts are protected from civil liability, etc.

You seem utterly uninformed on the topic you're publicly commenting. Free speech means the GOVERNMENT can't decide on behalf of the citizens what they can or can't say. As Twitter is not part of the government, any reference to free speech is idiotic.

What a Knife Balancing Act This is!

[X!0mbarg]

On one hand, we have the "Freedom of Speech" with the Right to be Heard, no matter how unpopular the subject.

On the other hand, we have Control and Censorship to deter things and expressions that can and have been harmful to society as a whole.

What will this result in?

Let's all watch and see what happens here. No matter the result, it will have a far-reaching effect on things to come after.

Did they try saying

[jpellino]

"Tweets don't kill people, people kill people." ?

Total Loss

[JimSadler]

This lady is flushing her money down the drain. I can not imagine a court allowing this suit to win.

Petrocurrency is a giant/global Pyramid scheme;

[NewYork]

Since 1971 OPEC colluded and selling crude oil exclusively in US$ resulting in friction between Islam and the West;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:The enemy of my enemy and the friend of my frie

[dl_sledding]

Well said, don't understand why you used AC...

The other (unstated but obvious) restriction on free speech is the situation where the utterance could or will directly endanger lives. The common example used is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. This is an obvious misuse and malicious use of speech, and rightly is against the law.

I know it's obvious, and has been stated in other conversations, but thought it should be included in this conversation.