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

[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

[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

[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

[_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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[AchilleTalon]

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

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]

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

[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

[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.

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.

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'

[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.

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:Can the rest of the world sue this woman

[PPH]

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

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.