Twitter Is Not Legally Responsible For The Rise of ISIS, Rules California District Court (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A lawsuit accusing Twitter of providing material support to ISIS has been dismissed by a California District Court. First filed in January, the lawsuit argued ISIS's persistent presence on Twitter constituted material support for the terror group, and sought to hold Twitter responsible for an ISIS-linked attack on that basis. Filed by the family of an American contractor named Lloyd Fields, the lawsuit sought damages from an ISIS-linked attack in Jordan that claimed Fields' life. The plaintiff's initial complaint alleged widespread fundraising and recruitment through the platform, attributing 30,000 foreign actors recruited through ISIS Twitter accounts in 2015 alone. The judge assigned to the case was ultimately not swayed by that reasoning, finding that the plaintiffs had not offered a convincing argument for holding Twitter liable. The plaintiff will have the chance to submit a modified version of the complaint within 20 days of the order, the second such modification ordered by the judge. The report adds: "Apart from the private nature of Direct Messaging, plaintiffs identify no other way in which their Direct Messaging theory seeks to treat Twitter as anything other than a publisher of information provided by another information content provider," the ruling reads. At the same time, even the private nature of Twitter's Direct Messaging feature "does not remove the transmission of such messages from the scope of publishing activity under section 230(c)(1)."

Comments

Another Case of Palsgraf

[speedplane]

I skimmed the full opinion, but a 1928 case is instructive. In the 1928 case of Palsgraf v. LIRR a women in a train station was injured when another passenger dropped a box of fireworks that caused some heavy equipment to fall on the women. The women sued the railroad company (as they likely had deeper pockets than the person dropping the fireworks). The court found that the rail road was too far removed from the events that occurred to find them liable. Here too, Twitter is too far removed from the actions of terrorists to find them liable.

This is a pretty interesting example of classic legal concepts being applied to new technology. Anyone who says that the law is outmoded or needs to catch up, only needs to read this opinion.

Re:Obama is responsible

[unixisc]

People blame 'Raygun' and the CIA/USA for arming the Taliban and al Qaeda. Actually, wrong on both counts. During the Afghan war, the party that the US supported was a Pashto Jihadist group called Hizb ul Islami, led by Gulbuddin Heqmatyar, who is today considered by the US a terrorist. That was also the warlord of choice of General Zia ul Haq, the Pak president: the US at the time outsourced its policy on Afghanistan (in terms of whom to support) to Pakistan, and on the Middle East to Egypt (which influenced the US to take Iraq's side in the war, partly to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the Arabs who boycotted them after their peace treaty w/ Israel). Pakistan switched its support to the Taliban when Benazir Bhutto - that champion of women - came to power and hated everyone that Gen Zia supported (since he had hanged her father). But by then, the Soviets were already out of Afghanistan, and Pakistan wanted a client regime in Kabul, which the Taliban delivered.

As far as al Qaeda went, they got their support from not just renegade Saudis (since the Saudi royals hated them and were hot on them since they wanted to overthrow the monarchy in Riyadh) but from other Arab Jihadists from countries like the Emirates and Qatar. Remember, only 3 countries recognized the Taliban regime even though they had almost 100% control in Afghanistan - KSA, UAE and Pakistan.