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Facebook Sued for $1 Billion for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror (bloomberg.com)
A group of Israelis and American lawyers are suing Facebook for a sum of $1 billion in damages for allegedly facilitating deadly Palestinian militant attacks on their loved ones. The application accuses Facebook of helping Hamas militants plot attacks that killed four Americans and wounded one in Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Bloomberg reports:"Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook's online social network platform and communication services,â making it liable for the violence against the five Americans, according to the lawsuit sent to Bloomberg by the office of the Israeli lawyer on the case, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and Israel. The suit said the group used Facebook to share operational and tactical information with members and followers, posting notices of upcoming demonstrations, road closures, Israeli military actions and instructions to operatives to carry out the attacks.
Phone companies are common carriers. Common carriers are shielded from liability if someone uses their network to plan or commit nefarious activities. They even lobbied to be common carriers so they specifically aren't held liable for the content of the conversations that traverse the telephone network.
Internet companies are NOT common carriers. They have lobbied to NOT be common carriers specifically so they have the power to control and and disallow speech they personally disagree with. By NOT censoring terrorist groups, they have shown that they are giving de facto support to those groups and that they effectively agree with the speech of terrorists, thereby they can absolutely be held liable for the content of the conversations and speech that traverses their networks.