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Twitter, Facebook and Google Sued For Facilitating Paris Attacks (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Reynaldo Gonzalez is suing Twitter, Facebook and Google for facilitating the spread of "extremist propaganda" after alleging the three companies "knowingly permitted" ISIS to recruit, raise money and spread its message across each of the respective platforms. His daughter, Nohemi, was among the 130 killed when religious extremists attacked Paris last year. In the court documents, Gonzalez goes on to say that religious extremists would not have the infrastructure to get their message to the masses without the three companies and their social networks. While each company does have moderators that review content, The Next Web notes that it's a statistical impossibility to maintain that any company of such a size can review, or even find, all instances of offensive content. Google is also being faced with a lawsuit from the Space Data Corporation of Chandler, Arizona, which claims the tech giant stole the idea behind its Wi-Fi-emitting balloon network, Project Loon.
No it isn't impossible. The companies just don't want to INVEST their money to moderate or curate their content. You can be damned sure they do curate some of their content. These companies have hundreds of billions of dollars in CASH. They could do it if they wanted to, but they don't want to. They could hire 100,000 people to do it. They don't want to spend their money. But it isn't impossible, they just need to change the way they do business.
1. This is just a bad idea from the point of view of freedom of speech. I'd rather know if there are nutjobs out there, in increasing numbers, advocating shitty things.
2. If Jihadists can't post in obvious places, they'll go to non-obvious ones. Do we really need these assholes learning how to run dark-web sites?
3. This will prevent truly *fabulous* events like this one, just today:
http://www.techly.com.au/2016/...
As funny as that last story is, note that the Anonymous hacker in question also managed to post IP numbers, phone info... and shared it with other hackers. I call that "a nice start."
With over 100 billion dollars in the bank, they cannot hire a hundred thousand people and have them look through the newly posted information?
ABC's mediawatch noted that facebooks advertising platform is so good, it can literally sell a specific ad to a specific human because we have posted our lives there.
If we can advertise that well, cant we find a single video of a american islamist pointing out that the gun laws make it trivial for a person to perform brainless slaughter like we've witnessed a few days ago.
Lazy psychopaths.
They'd throw an AI at it at best, and then have to hire a significantly smaller staff of people to look over complaints. Wouldn't be surprised if the AI twitter bots can be re-purposed for this.
Here is the thing though. Even if they could, would they want to? If they are shown to specifically filter certain content, wouldn't they make themselves more liable for the things that slip by? It'd be better to just ask users to report content that violates their terms of service, than to search it out themselves with fervor.
What this person wants, or will get if these companies getting stuck with responsibility will be the death of organized (as in a single place) free speech. It will fall to smaller groups and likely be a return to something like it was pre-MySpace, where people had their own sites catered to their own community. Much harder to track those down. Groups like these exist for things, such as drug trades or illegal porn, more specifically on the dark net.
For an example of what has been done in the past, think of the KKK or the Neo-Nazis. They aren't repressed by the governments like many would like, because if they are, then they'd be harder to track and likely act out a lot more. They calm their national terrorist groups by allowing them to speak publicly.
To one of the greatest quotes in history, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Bugger off with your censorship! If something is actually inciting violence (eg. All the fags must be killed), fine, take it down. You find something offensive (eg. I hate fags) that doesn't mean it should be taken down. Freedom is dying a slow death while the mobs applaud.
no fan of these companies, but freedom of speech should be absolute on principle.
as long as a person does not engage in actual violence, or a legal crime. he/she should be able to do whatever they want(including violent speech).
but these companies have already given up on freedom of speech. they have set up and use, censors and moderators, against those who are not actually violent and are not criminals .
in this case also, they seem to defend by pointing out impracticality of monitoring their platforms, rather than standing by principle of not monitoring at all.
If anybody dares say anything negative about precious islam and the migrant takeover of europe, those posts are quickly censored and removed. At least with this these companies would be forced to censor the radical islamic terrorists from coordinating their attacks on the services.
Some people are just brainless
How about copy machine manufactures since they there is still paper propaganda?
How about sue video camera manufacturers?
How about Adobe for building Premier?
How far does "facilitating" go?
The reason that only "social media" is being sued is because "social media" is currently the in thing.
They're becoming more and more like Americans every day.
Look around for some deep pockets, and sue the crap out of them.
Because ISIS crazies wouldn't find some other way to communicate.
Anti-muslim speech they can get rid of no problem.
The Orlando shooter making terrorist threats on his facebook page? Pages calling for the assassination of Donald Trump?
Not really a big deal to Zucko. I hope President Trump has him tried and executed for treason. Not joking.
Don't forget them. How about the city? They provided the roads used by the terrorists!
If Trump becomes president then there will be refugees FROM the U.S. by the end of his term.
Google, Twitter, and Facebook didn't pull the trigger. It's time to realize there is nothing you can do to stop an attacker before it happens.
When you begin to consume ISIS propaganda you're already radicalized. What radicalizes Muslims in the west is the behavior of the west. Trump, for example. He is ISIS' biggest asset in the USA.
what does groklaw say, or better yet WWJDD?
What would Jack Daniels do?
"Religious Extremists?" Really?
If Google, Facebook, and Twitter are editorializing content, such as silencing right wing views and anti-immigration sentiments (Zuckerberg met with Merkel to discuss implementation of this, for instance). Then theses companies lose their DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions which safeguard a platform provider from being liable for user generated content. Under the DMCA such media platforms are not responsible for the content posted by their users so long as they are not editorializing the content, such as filtering posts along political lines to present a political bias.
If DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are stripped from Google, Facebook and/or Twitter then THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SPREADING ISLAMIC TERRORIST PROPAGANDA AND INCITING VIOLENCE.
Blaming a small handful of online (and rich) entities for any kind of terror attack is absurd. In general, no single company facilitates a terrorist attack. As far as I'm aware, no one sued Boeing for 9/11. As far as I'm aware, no one has sued Toyota for the rise of ISIS. Taking it a step further, no one has sued clothing manufacturers for allowing terrorists to blend in with the rest of society. No one has sued the doctors that might have treated terrorists. No one has sued local construction companies for building the roads/subways that the terrorists have used. And on and on and on.
I think it's deplorable that people are trying to make a quick buck in the courts on the backs of innocent victims.
It's required for me to access the UseNet, and I only have access to the groups My ISP has allowed.
A newsgroup for any discussion you can think of, only one binary subject is not allowed/illegal, I assume text as well.
Also Missing is TOR and it hasn't been forgotten, another one that has no chance of a payday.
Let's just lock every single person in the world into individual cells, then we can have ULTIMATE SAFETY! You will never again fear a single thing. Of course you will never again be able to do a single thing, but that's a small price to pay to feel safe, right?
The only lazy psychopath is you and people who think like you. Life is risk, get used to it.
I suppose next he'll be filing suits against the rail lines, car manufacturers & airlines for transporting them, electric, sewer & landlords for sustaining them, their employers for supplying them the funds for their nefarious activities, and their parents giving birth to them. People are responsible for their own actions, not the companies that give the public communications, utilities, housing & services.
Agreed, the man desperately sues whatever's around and will certainly be disallowed in court, facing an army of shark lawyers. But who here will go through that real ordeal, losing what is the most precious thing to a father, his own daughter? The man is desperate and sues everything more or less close to that dreadful death. He will lose in court, but that's not the most important thing to him, he has to fight, to struggle. The lawsuit is the reflect of a huge sentiment of injustice.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The lawsuit is an interesting example of the differences between the Middle East and the West. In the Middle East, when innocent people are killed en masse, terrorists are born. In the West, when innocent people are killed en masse, frivolous platitudes and lawsuits are born. I don't know how you defeat an enemy that grows after every attack you make on them. But, looking at the direction our society is going, it's pretty obvious that people have figured out how to defeat us. Just instill enough fear that we voluntarily devolve our society.
We call it "Deportation".
Except the real problem. The media's coverage in the last week makes me paraphrase Raiders:
"That story only had one side to it; are you absolutely sure?"
"Yes."
"Their staff is too big."
"They're digging in the wrong place!"
This is about the fact that Twitter, Google, and Facebook conspire to censor and ban any criticism of Islam or ISIS whilst allowing these groups to function on American & European dollar and recruit the fanatics that go on to commit war crimes and other acts of aggression against the civilized world as we know it. ISIS still maintains a twitter account. I don't know about you, but I don't want people trying to kill me just for existing as a white man in a better world than they want to build using sites born and run in my country.
Facebook has repeatedly, and has been proven doing so, censoring, banning, and deleting any ill will shown towards those of a savage, disgusting religion. A religion with principles predicated on the death and mutilation of anything not sharing its ~grand vision~
Google, Twitter, and Facebook have blood on their hands, and they have conspired to allow these terrorist groups easier access to martyrs.
Very clever choice of words. Make sure to ignore the "M" or "I" word, lump everyone together.
Don't be islamophobe. Not all islamic orthodoxy lead to murder. It is a complex problem and we cannot stop the importation of muslim until we figure it out. The destruction of the western civilisation and the white race is on tight schedule. You can't call off a genocide like that just because some 'radical' element want to go faster.
Also most muslim will just cheer for ISIL and would not dream of throwing fags off the roof themselves. #NotAllMulism
Just shoot yourself. You're a fucking moron.
You let them in. Your fault.
These companies are dedicated to sifting through the data that passes through the networks. Sure, they don't it now to target ads, but if they can target ads certainly they can target terrorists!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Didn't the attackers use a Renault? A Clio I think it was. Sue their asses off!
In other news, terrorists are often known to wear shoes.
(I mean: I don't have *any* sympathy for Twitter, Facebook or its ilk. As far as I'm concerned they can all go down in flames were it not for my fears that the abomination which is going to supplant them will be much worse, if history is any measure. But this...)
The key point is not the fabrication but the distribution. If the post office was distributing that propaganda under the form of paper without vetting it, in some countries they could be sued. If the radio was airing Daesh propaganda without vetting it they would be sued (and probably arrested). Same with TV. But since this is the internet Facebook and co get a free pass to republish the user self made content. Whether one find that good or not, depends on one's culture. But this is not about free speech, but rather republication by a private entity of someone else content, and whether or not they are civilly liable for that republication. Note that as far as I can tell , in some case they are indeed civilly liable and have to take down the content when reported : like copyright infringement, but they are not, so far as I can tell, forced to vet the content themselves. Thus I expect the lawsuit to go nowhere or be dismissed outright.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm sure that the telephone companies should be getting sued too then. The terrorists must have used phones at some point... and they probably all wore shoes too. If they had to be barefoot it would have been a lot harder.
Actually, social networks already perform a very efficient form of censorship when dealing with nipples or some other kind of "sexual" content.
It is just a matter of (wrong) policy.
This man's kid got brutally killed by a terror organization continuing to spread propaganda and recruitment material, I'd call that a valid excuse for being angry and irrational kicking in every direction. Now if this guy actually won that'd be a different story, but the legal system is going to say "we sympathize wth your loss, but no". In fact, if it wasn't so grim he'd be laughed out of court. I'm not sure how that would be "devolving" anything, would it be more "evolved" if he went postal in a mosque? Because I kinda got the impression you seem to think the problem is we don't fight back. At least not in the same way.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That is not the point. Only and idiot would want every piece of content vetted before it could be published and want to experience the huge chill of ISPs and webapps and companies scared stiff of being sued for any and all claims against content as their responsibility. I can't believe there are people in slashdot of all places that don't get this.
That'll solve this problem, and others.
If you were really concerned with helping to thwart terror attacks, you would continue to let (or even encourage) terror organizations to continue to use these services, voluntarily providing potential intelligence with each and every post, message, and tweet. Don't think for a second that the same government organizations using these mechanisms to collect information on their own citizens isn't also collecting information offered up by known terror groups. Allowing these accounts to continue to post photos, videos, comments, and other potential information (sometimes even geotagged!), is a treasure trove of data that *should* be thwarting more terror attacks than it is facilitating. Instead we report accounts that offer up this intelligence to have them shut down, and ISIL fighters actually work to create new accounts in order to continue feeding us intelligence, but rather than make use of it, we sue to have it shut down completely, driving them to much more secure means of communication (read end-to-end encryption). If may make some a little queasy inside to see some of the information/photos/videos that they post, but forcing it off the air isn't helping to stop terror attacks. If anything it makes them harder to stop.
As without streets noone had ever arrived in paris, and without mother there wouldn't exist anyone to place a bomb (or build a city like paris to attack in the first place). So yes, if you call 'infrastructure' like google et.al. for sure is, then what about telecommunication companies? Why should there be any difference? Just forbid humanity you stupid tweat.
See, it's this reason alone why I will never work for lawyers...or date one. Never. They give themselves a bad name.
how about the roads? the Paris local gov? the bus company? the phone company?
I want to know what shoes he was wearing - he couldn't have done it without shoes.
With over 100 billion dollars in the bank, I could hire a hundred thousand people ... and pay them for five years. Then the whole system would collapse for lack of money to pay salaries, unless I started charging users for that, yeah.
Where do they get 10 million dollars of cash flow to pay all these salaries?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
It knowingly created oxygen that was used to keep terrorists alive.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
So, the choice is beween having savages in your midst or having rights, and they choose savages!
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This should be dismissed right off the bat regardless of a valid debate it must generate. Social Networks involved have done their part to prevent the spreading of those messages as far as the EULA (or their best interests) is concerned, we know because they reported so, the media covered it etc etc etc, surely they could've done more, but this lawsuit to them for "facilitating" is clearly very poor logic, should the messages have been printed on flyers or on walls in the streets they would have sued the City Hall or the printing industry?
Its understandable that they grief, its a tragedy, but doing something like this not only makes them look stupid, it makes them look like they are trying to get a profit from it, It wouldn't surprise me if there are shoddy lawyers behind this.
I'm not really sure how people first started thinking lawyers can protect us from everything.
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Probably not during the Viking or Cold War eras
I don't see regulations on Facebook defeating ISIS.
They don't have to recruit through the internet. They could easily do this in person by visiting schools and other places to meet potential recruits. Many gangs and white supremacist groups have used this technique to recruit people log before the internet existed. What is stopping terror groups from doing the same?