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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.
Before Facebook, did they used to sue paper and pencil manufacturers for the same thing?
I'm not so sure it is frivolous. FB opened this can of worms itself by engaging in censorship and control of its pages. Now, if they can prove in court that it is just a false perception of censorship and control, they can get away with this. But, if they are filtering their content manually at all, they become legally responsible for all of it.
Has no one ever heard the term "common carrier"? You don't get to pick and choose what speech you allow on your little safe space AND be free from liability if someone commits crimes or otherwise does "bad things" on your services. This is why telephone companies have been classified as common carriers for nearly a century. If you allow all speech, unfettered, then you're free from liability for what anyone does on your service.
I'm honestly shocked it took this long for someone to call these hypocritical companies out on their bullshit, and I support it 100%. They want to be able to control speech, but only speech "they" dislike. That's fine, but when you open up that can of worms, you'd better be ready to make sure you're keeping the walled garden free of ALL vermin (and apply your policies equally, which we all know these scumbags don't) or someone's eventually going to call you out on it.
I'm not so sure it is frivolous. FB opened this can of worms itself by engaging in censorship and control of its pages. Now, if they can prove in court that it is just a false perception of censorship and control, they can get away with this. But, if they are filtering their content manually at all, they become legally responsible for all of it.
It is worth noting that Facebook's reporting system appears to be designed more for hate speech and nudity than for terrorism, and they made design decisions in the reporting system. For example, there are thousands of shares of terrorist hoaxes every day that they don't appear to even try to stop. E.g. the meme about all the stolen UPS uniforms (http://www.snopes.com/rumors/upsuniforms.asp)
Real lawyers write in C++
They're breaking the rules too. See creating, approving, and encouraging building of settlements in occupied territory. A lot of Israelis are opoosed to this but they're not able to break up the majority coalition (ie, the ultra orthodox will happily side with the hardliners as long as they continue to be exempt from military service). Rationally it is obvious that building the settlements only disrupts the possibility of peace but politics and rationality don't cooperate with each other.