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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."
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.
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.
Why not put forth ANOTHER all or nothing argument? We all know there is NO variation of beliefs in a self-identified group of people? Right?
These arguments are making us dumber.
Don't forget them. How about the city? They provided the roads used by the terrorists!
"Religious Extremists?" Really?
May as well sue the French government. The roads that the attackers used sure as shit facilitated their attack as well.
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.
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.
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.
It's not a DMCA provision. That's a safe harbor for copyrighted material. What you really want is the Section 230 safe harbor, which states that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.". A social networking service clearly falls under this provision.
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!"
Very clever choice of words. Make sure to ignore the "M" or "I" word, lump everyone together.
They already scan the content of what passes through their networks, How else would they know what ads to show their users? There is no way anyone who does this can be considered a "common carrier".
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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.
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
. What radicalizes Muslims in the west is the behavior of the west.
Then explain why there are so few radical Muslims in the US (whose sins in the middle east need no repeating), and so many in places like Belgium?
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.
Rubbish. The definition of a common carrier concerns blocking/refusing traffic or items. It says nothing about sniffing or scanning anything.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This does happen some times, if the government was warned and failed to act. That's the key thing here, if Twitter was told about ISIS accounts and failed to act then they may be liable as a "carrier". However, Twitter seems quite good at removing ISIS accounts when notified so this lawsuit may have a hard time proving their culpability.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you sniff and scan then your are subject to rules on what you sniff and scan. These social media players are digging themselves into a hole.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
See, it's this reason alone why I will never work for lawyers...or date one. Never. They give themselves a bad name.
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!
...
I'm not really sure how people first started thinking lawyers can protect us from everything.
...
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?