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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.
Throw these clowns in jail for a while for filing frivolous lawsuits. Then put them in the town square (of NYC or something) with a vat of tar and a pile of feathers, let passers by apply liberal amounts of each.
Before Facebook, did they used to sue paper and pencil manufacturers for the same thing?
These schmucks are thumbing their noses at the International Criminal Court and UN findings of war crimes, systematic abuses of Palestinians decried by the international community at large, a peace plan based admittedly in LIES, and are constantly ratcheting up attacks on civilian areas while complaining that people there are being radicalized into terror by their very actions. For Israelis to feel they have standing to sue FACEBOOK for FACILITATING TERRORISM?
It takes more than a little chutzpah. It's ridiculous.
Should come around, might as well sue FB over all those violent settlers groups inciting violence and planning attacks. but that would be antisemetic some how.
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.
Search up "common carrier' in your favorite engine. If internet companies would like to be free from liability for illegal activity conducted on or facilitated by their networks, they should see about becoming one. Of course, then they don't get to control narratives by censoring and disallowing speech they don't like.
Can't have their cake and eat it, too.
This is a good point. I would find in favor of Facebook where I on a jury but the more Facebook filters content they don't agree with, the more they might open themselves up for things like this. I would think you'd have to show that they were aware of the communications taking place and chose not to interfere though... or that being aware of it would have been such a trivial thing as to show recklessness on their part.
Ah lawyers... doing what they do best. Looking for a big payout... Are they doing this on their own time? Or is this analogous to browsing porn while at work?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Regardless of this specific lawsuite, we should ask ourselves, are Facebook and others doing enough to stop terrorists for leveraging their platform?
Consider the great effort by Youtube and others to stop copyright infringements. Both internally and by use of DMCA notice and take-down.
The effort in stopping not only incitement to racial violence but also operational planning of such acts seems meager.
I think lawmakers are almost inherently behind the times on this, and we seem to not have an anti-terror lobby anywhere as strong as the stronger-IP lobby. It would be nice to see Facebook get their act together and do more, setting standards for others to follow and if necessary become law.
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.
for not smiting the Palestinian people and allowing hem fight back? Wouldn't that mean your god doesn't like you or likes the Palestinians more?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
for use of their airplanes as a medium for terror.
Better sue FedEx and Amazon also. And Google, but then, everyone's already suing Google.
Spread the new meme. Maybe this will affect the idiots in HR who refuse to hire job applicants without facebook accounts.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I have to admit, I did not deem it possible. If someone had told me, I would have said he is a liar and that this is completely unpossible.
Me, siding with Facebook on something.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While they're at it, why not sue the inventors of all forms of communication for ww1, 2 and whatever crime comes to mind: I mean you could sue Tim Berners-Lee for this, all cyber heists ever made, all online-mandated murders. He definitely knew people would do good and bad with such a powerful technology. Let's sue God/the Big Bang/Darwin for knowingly envisioning the antics of a being so powerful with his free will for the unethical. Now seriously, grow up and stop blaming society for society - we're all to blame for what makes us rational and justice is no means for correcting something that cannot be controlled without losing something more important.
this lawsuit is retarded. They might as well sue the manufacturers of pens and paper for facilitating terrorism too.
This lawsuit is actually brilliant, and it should succeed rather easily.
Here's why. Telecommunication services like Facebook, Google, and the Phone Company, are either classified as common carriers or as media providers. The difference between the two is that the former carries any content someone wishes to transmit, and the latter picks and chooses the content it will transmit.
The former is immune from lawsuits over the content that it carries because it takes no part in deciding what that content is. They are a neutral carrier with no interest in the content. The latter, however, does pick and choose the content that it carries, and because it does so, it is responsible for the outcome of that decision.
So, since Facebook knowingly censors and curates content, controls speech, and otherwise acts as a content provider and not a common carrier (and indeed I am not aware that Facebook is considered by the government to be one), they are responsible for the content they carry, even if they did not themselves put the actual content on the site.
I'm looking forward to the outcome, but I imagine these activist CEOs will have to find a way to shove their agendas down our throats another way.
Sorry no car analogy. But I can imagine the outrage if a gun forum let it's users plot a bombing on an abortion clinic or something. Their would be a call for blood and lawsuits.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Anything that even hints at criticizing Islam is immediately censored as "hate speech." No matter how innocuous, or true, the criticism may be.
But the same Facebook is just fine with allowing Hamas to use Facebook to plan terror attacks.
I don't know about the merits of the lawsuit, but Facebook's behavior seems suspicious.
Turn in your law license, now.
The Communications Decency Act specifically allows this. 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(2) states, in quite understandable terms, that:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of--
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected...
47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1) also 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.
Which means that you must show not only that Facebook was aware of the specific messages complained of (since (c)(1) does not impose any duty to investigate), but also that any decision was not taken in good faith. One example of a good faith basis for a decision not to censor: the government cannot punish a speaker for making statements that do not rise to imminent threats of lawless action, and Facebook has no legal obligation to create or impose a broader standard.
Your "de facto" support argument would be crushed. Hopefully, the lawyers who filed the suit have more than that, or their clients will be paying large monetary sanctions after Facebook wins its Rule 11 motion.
The vast majority of Facebook's censorship follows complaints from their users. They simply don't have the staff to censor every page there without that initiation. Pages not in English are especially difficult to even respond to complaints about, because they don't have sufficient employees who speak a language other than English. Add to that the likelihood that most of the terrorist communication undoubtedly comes from private groups that don't generate complaints. What the lawsuit seems to say Facebook should have been doing is maintaining an immense staff for every worldwide language monitoring every Facebook post made. That's absurd.
Did you even read that? The first part releases them from liability for CENSORING things. English is hard, isn't it?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Common carriers are shielded from liability if someone uses their network to plan or commit nefarious activities.
One should not need a special common carrier status to avoid liability for a crime that one did not actively and knowingly participate in—if only to the point of willful negligence. Common carrier status is nothing more than a way for the government to exercise control over neutral service providers by threatening them with unjust punishment for the crimes of others unless they comply.
Did Facebook have positive knowledge of these specific terrorist activities? No! Is Facebook's service used primary for such activities? No! Would it have been reasonable to expect Facebook to spy on, index, and data-mine its users' private (or even semi-private) and predominantly innocent communications to the extent that would be necessary to reliably detect this activity, at significant cost and no benefit to itself? Again, no! Case dismissed, and kindly stop wasting the court's time with frivilous lawsuits.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The second part (sec. 230(c)(1), which is actually the first part of that subsection) says that they are not liable for not censoring things. Did you read that? Did you read the part that of my post that specifically discussed it?
Were those parts too difficult for you to understand? How do you propose to get around 230(c)(1)? Shall I drag out the ever growing canon of CDA caselaw that puts the concept in even plainer terms for you?
The first part addressed the bad argument that because they choose to censor at all, they lost their immunity. If you stopped there, that's your problem, not mine.
Of course FB censors, just like the old ladies who ban books at the local library.....
And high school Principals who decide that 'this skirt is 1" too short...'.
In other words, as they please.
Best look into who owns stock.... maybe someone wants terrorist stuff to be unnoticed...
Just like any anti-Hillary stuff gets censored, but anything anti-trump is just not noticed...
It helps if you read everything that I wrote. Then again, the original poster did not say that Facebook could be sued for not censoring something, so I didn't emphasize that point.
If you want to take that position, you should research the CDA as well. We've seen it before, we will see it again, and I for one do not expect to see a different result.
Zuckerberg can be replaced by one of his stooges.
What we need is some way, without killing people, of simply eliminating all the data on Facebook's servers and all their backups too. That would be a boon for humanity.
Doing the same for Microsoft would be as well.
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.
The real news here is... someone found a way to accomplish something with Facebook?!
You have certainly tried to superimpose things to look that way.. the liability part comes AFTERWORD. Agenda perhaps? I will post the whole thing...
(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker 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.
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]
So they are very specific about liability in concerns to censoring. I don't see a blanket statement releasing them from liability for what they publish.....
love is just extroverted narcissism
If Facebook filtered all terrible content there wouldn't be much left.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Where you did what? Took a dump? Farted? Stuck a booger?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's funny, because you've quoted it.
47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1)
Treatment of publisher or speaker 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.
Not liable for publishing third party content
over
and over
and over again
Hosting illegal materials is still illegal. The CDA doesn't exonerate someone who knowingly and willfully continues to make content available that is illegal regardless of who is considered the "publisher". Ever seen the operator of a child porn site get raided? Yeah, it's like that except with terrorists. Just because Facebook is Facebook doesn't make them above the law, and trying to cling to your weak/twisted interpretation of the CDA doesn't change that.
Section 230. That is all. But even with that, I bet you that lawmakers will try and work around it and find a way to make social networking services liable for terrorists using their services, unknowingly or not;
There is a big difference between civil libel cases and ignoring criminal conduct being enabled by your service.
love is just extroverted narcissism
OK, I was going to use "Evil" instead of "Good" in my subject line, but I know how Slashdot works and undoubtedly one of God's Chosen People would have modded me down for that (they can be so petty).
So now the people who believe that God has chosen them and will favor them in any dispute against any other people are taking offense that Facebook is not opposing free speech hard enough. Maybe they are even upset that Facebook is not killing Palestinians and evicting Palestinian families out of their own country. (After all, just by living they are taking up space that could be used for Jewish settlement.) What a shock!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Prevailing interpretation of the CDA to you.
It's not as if we haven't seen this before:
Twitter responded that as a publisher, it is immune from liability for content posted by its users under the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
But plaintiffs' attorney Joshua Arisohn said that because direct messages are not published, they fall outside the protections of that statute.
"The common definition of publisher is one who disseminates information to the public," Arisohn said. "If Congress wanted a broader definition for publisher, it could have made one."
Twitter attorney Seth Waxman replied that direct messages are covered under the 2009 Ninth Circuit ruling, Barnes v. Yahoo!, which found that entities cannot be held liable for content posted online by third parties. Finding otherwise would that mean every provider of email and direct messaging, such as Apple and Google, could be liable for content exchanged by their users, Waxman said.
Orrick was not persuaded that companies like Twitter could be sued for messages sent by users.
"Just because it's private messaging doesn't put this beyond the Communications Decency Act's reach," Orrick said.
But please, continue to make unsupported assertions about the field I practice in. I'll certainly take your word over actual precedent and reputable lawyers.
I think you are losing sight of the fact this isn't a nation suing but individuals that were harmed. Regardless if they are Israeli or in this case Americans too, people shouldn't be murdered no matter what land they are on. Is it alright for ISIS to murder people because it is now their land? What about if an American is murdered in a Native American reservation? The point being is this is a civil matter brought by victims families against people they believe had a hand in the events that led to people they love to be murdered, no matter where they were located.
Name three acts of terror committed by the State of Israel...
Hamas is distinguished by, for example, being designated "terrorist organization" by various governments — a diverse bunch from US to European Union to Egypt.
And not for nothing — whatever you may think of their goals, their methods are terroristic. By definition.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sue the Road Department for facilitating every crime which involved the use of a motor vehicle on a road or highway. Those guys aren't going to get away helping terrorists so easily!
Why, in my town they built a road that runs right past the bank, and some bank robbers used it when they held up the branch. Tell me that those road-building bastards aren't complicit!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
We already have excellent replacements, people just don't want to use them.
ZDnet says Linux Mint 18 is the best desktop, period.
The answer is for a service like Facebook not to censor at all. One is supposed to be 18 or over to use the service, and controls should exist so that people can self censor. Who cares what a terrorist group says if you didn't sign up to read it? Even if they paid to spam, their opinions don't bug me at all. I'm very confident in my own opinions, ask anyone that knows me. Actions cause harm, words do not.
Of course FB decided to censor to suite their master's agenda. So in this case they could in my opinion be held liable. I'm going to question whether or not the suit should be one sided though, as I know a bit about the worlds largest prison and believe that Palestine has some grounds for lawsuits and damages themselves. The UN has had several findings against Israel, so who's court are we going to allow to rule exactly? I am skeptical that Israel would allow non-friendly courts to preside over the case.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Name three acts of terror committed by the State of Israel...
Just search through the Goldstone report three times for "white flag".
The IDF refused to let an ambulance bring them to the hospital, so they walked. Amal and Souad died. Samar had a spinal injury and was left paraplegic for life. The Israeli government never investigated this event or prosecuted the soldier responsible.
This may or may not have been a horrible war crime, but it was not an Act of Terror. There is a fairly clear definition: civilians must be the targets (not bystanders) of calculated (not accidental or mistaken) violence for the purpose of intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.
Hamas has uses ambulances to transport troops and ammunition. They also use children for suicide attacks — a common practice by Islamists in Palestine and world-wide. Children are also used as human shields — because it works on impressionable useful idiots like yourself. Whether the women, who stepped out, were innocent, or were about to throw a tank-disabling bomb under the tracks, may not have been obvious.
But, again whether the IDF soldier had justifiable suspicions in his shooting of the family, or committed a war crime, it was not an act of terror.
And I did ask for three examples — certainly, a country labeled "terrorist" by detractors would have at least three acts of terror to its name...
Hamas averages dozens of such acts every year — their whole strategy is based on targeting Israeli civilians, because they are impotent at targeting IDF. And yet, you'd like to pretend, Israel is "worse" or "just as bad". Fail.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Typical propaganda and typical Anti-Semetic bullshit.
Anti-Israeli != antisemitic. If you think Israeli = Jewish (ethnically or religiously), you might want to take a look around (assuming you're in Israel). If you think all the non-Jewish Israelis should be kicked out or stripped of their citizenship, you are without exception racist. You would think we would have learned that racism never bodes well for Jews. Hamas is a cancerous organization, yes, but Netanyahu and his Likud buddies are treading on ICC thin ice too. Just because Hamas is worse does not make others better.
And as for support for Palestine, fine, and dandy, but you should know, that they are REALLY not very nice to all kinds of people, who aren't just like them.
Palestinian != Muslim != Jewish hating Muslim. Are you saying that Palestinian Christians and Jews hate Christians and Jews but love Muslim terrorists? Palestine is majority muslim, and Israel is majority Jewish, sure, but, assuming you're Jewish, take a stroll into East Jerusalem and see how many of those Jew-hating non-Israelis in identity limbo treat you like crap. Count them. And count the number of people who treat you like a person. Sure Palestinians have a long way to go on a number of fronts (women, gays, etc. etc.) but don't go throwing stones just yet -- the fully liberated woman and gay pride parades are not welcomed with open arms by everyone in Israel either.
I will NEVER understand why any Jew is a liberal.
It's tough to get out of the box and realize that everyone, including conservatives, is wrong some of the time, I know. Feel free to stay in it and close the lid -- but only if you don't bother the rest of us.
Why didn't they sue The Internet? It's bigger and has more money.
:T:R:A:N:S:
^^^THIS.
Someone who gets it. Of course, that's anathema to the likes of Netanyahu who just wants to continue to suck on the teat of US military aid.to continue his racist policies.
The only way to get serious negotiations going is to end that unconditional aid.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.