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.

Comments

Statistically impossible or paid to think lazily

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

absurd lawsuit and abandoning principles

[sittingnut]

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.

Re:absurd lawsuit and abandoning principles

[Megol]

You _are_ free to speak limited only by the laws of your country. But what you are talking about is forcing private entities to allow your speech to be broadcast - which is bullshit.

Re:absurd lawsuit and abandoning principles

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

I hope you realize that you're not thinking things through here. You're basically going all-in on freedom, just because, and not realizing that there are consequences to that. Well, you do, but then a sentence later, you back out.

If freedom of speech is absolute, then you're only going to be ignoring the consequences of speech. Fortunately, you aren't quite lost in the notion, since you identify that violence is wrong, and recognize that crimes can be established.

That means you can recognize that some behavior is wrong. Does that mean you think lies and deception should be stopped, or can we do nothing about them?

Does someone who calls for another to be harmed, get blood on their hands when another person does it?

Are you prepared to deal with the results of your absolute position?

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 .

Or they've rejected the false notion of inaction in the face of harm being caused to others. They see things as wrong, and stop it.

Or more likely, they see it as costing them money as others don't want to be around that kind of bullshit.

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.

In which case, the question becomes, are their actions sufficient to show their responsibility was appropriate?

That's a tougher question.

Let's take classified ads in the paper. Should a paper consider who it sells space to? What if they deal with criminals? What if they become a haven for prostitution? What should they do? Hands off, or some awareness?

Sue paper mills?

[MickyTheIdiot]

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.

And the phone company!

[jfdavis668]

Don't forget them. How about the city? They provided the roads used by the terrorists!

Boeing? Toyota? Hanes?

[somenickname]

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.