
Facebook Sued for $1B for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror - exolymph
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/facebook-sued-for-1b-for-alleged-hamas-use-of-medium-for-terror
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cft
I do not understand why this is unclear:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230)

"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."

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, for one thing, because that's the "Communications Decency Act of 1996",
and the US-law claims here arise under the "Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001", and
one of the long-established canons of statutory construction is that, where
there is a conflict, the newer enactment supercedes the older one.

For another, the suit doesn't ask for them to be "treated as the publisher or
speaker" of the information, only a knowing collaborator with such a
"publisher or speaker", based on their own Data Usage Policy and the manner in
which they selectively promote content to particular users.

~~~
kyledrake
That's even more ridiculous than 230. Facebook is obviously not a "knowing
collaborator" with a terrorist organization. They have hundreds of millions of
users, and some of those users are evil. Policing all of them on an individual
basis is impossible. That's why 230 is in place.

The spirit of this is to try to use a hastily written anti-terrorism bill to
do a run-around on 230 for profit, and it's not going to work. Even if the
lawsuit succeeds, congress will quickly fix the loophole in a mostly unanimous
vote. The alternative would be a horrible tech recession as essentially all
social networks and ISPs shut down due to unmaintainable legal risk.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Facebook is obviously not a "knowing collaborator" with a terrorist
> organization.

I don't doubt that's what the evidence would show at trial; OTOH, the legal
system quite deliberately is designed not to operate based on prejudgements
about what evidence will end up showing.

> They have hundreds of millions of users, and some of those users are evil.
> Policing all of them on an individual basis is impossible.

The plaintiffs' claim is that, based on Facebooks own statements in its Data
Usage Policy _and_ its own descriptions of how it selectively promotes
content, that it does, in effect, actively police its users, and that the
promotion of terrorist content is the result of that active policing.

I'm inclined to think that this position is, _in fact_ , incorrect, but I
would be less quick to dismiss the complaint as failing to make a colorable
legal claim.

> The spirit of this is to try to use a hastily written anti-terrorism bill to
> do a run-around on 230 for profit, and it's not going to work.

Perhaps, perhaps the intent of this is to use the Anti-Terrorism Act as a
lever to get Facebook to change its business practices to reduce the utility
of the platform as a vehicle for terrorists.

> Even if the lawsuit succeeds, congress will quickly fix the loophole in a
> mostly unanimous vote. The alternative would be a horrible tech recession as
> essentially all social networks and ISPs shut down due to unmaintainable
> legal risk.

I don't think there is near-unanimity in the US Congress that "social networks
and ISPs" (even if both were at risk; the particular style of charge here is
applicable to the former but not really the latter) are a more favored group
than "Israeli victims of Islamist terror groups".

------
kyledrake
1) ISPs are shielded from legal liability. This lawsuit is DOA, they will
likely dismiss it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)

2) This site is horrible. It pops up a noisy video thing on the bottom left
corner and you _can 't turn it off._ Autoplay video on news sites needs to
stop, it's getting out of control.

------
reuven
I'm pretty horrified by the use of Facebook and other social networks to
spread all sorts of hateful stuff. Lots of horrible stuff, such as
instructions for how to kill Jews in stabbing attacks, has been spread on
Facebook. That hasn't been the only factor in the recent wave of terror
attacks against Israelis, but I'm sure that it has played a role.

Moreover, a clever set of experiments, in which identical postings attacking
Jews and Palestinians were posted on Facebook, demonstrated that the Facebook
"community standards" have very little tolerance for saying bad things about
Palestinians and Muslims, and a lot of tolerance for saying such things
against Jews.

And yet. I just don't see how this sort of lawsuit, particularly in a US
court, will hold up. (I should add that I'm not a lawyer, and so forth.)
Holding Facebook responsible for hateful speech -- even speech strongly
encouraging people to commit horrible acts of murder against innocent
civilians -- strikes me as a hard sell. And holding Facebook financially
responsible for allowing such postings seems even more far-fetched.

That said, the experiment that I described, in which anti-Semitic hate speech
was ignored and anti-Arab/Muslim hate speech was taken down, might make
Facebook liable. According to the Wikipedia article cited earlier
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)),
it sounds like if Facebook is monitoring, editing, or censoring posted
messages, then it might be liable to some degree.

In other words, perhaps Facebook is liable precisely because it does try to
monitor and remove hate speech. I'm not sure, but from the little I
understand, this might prove to be an important point.

I agree that there is a heckuva lot of horrible, nasty, anti-Israel stuff
being spread online by terror groups. Whether Facebook can or should be held
liable is a different question, and I'm skeptical.

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jayess
The complaint filed with the court is available here:

[https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/460178/1-0.h...](https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/460178/1-0.html)

The meat of the complaint begins on page 53, where the plaintiffs allege that
Facebook provided material support for terrorists.

Interestingly, the plaintiffs allege several violations of Israeli law but
they are seeking relief in US federal court. I don't see how the US federal
court could have jurisdiction over violations of Israeli statutes.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Interestingly, the plaintiffs allege several violations of Israeli law but
> they are seeking relief in US federal court.

The first and second claims are claims under US law. The third and subsequent
claims are claims under Israeli law. US law -- specifically, 28 USC Sec. 1367
-- gives US federal courts "supplemental jurisdiction" over claims (regardless
of the law under which they arise) that are part of the same "case or
controversy" as claims within their original jurisdiction.

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6stringmerc
The notion of liability and technology in communications is a worthwhile
subject for ongoing discussion, experimentation, and advancement. This
particular case doesn't strike me as having a lot of merit, and, furthermore,
stinks of trying to win the case in the court of public opinion by baiting
Bloomberg into picking it up and repeating the claims. A more thorough outlet
might have pointed out what cft did, in that the case basically is without a
shred of a chance of winning.

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rememberlenny
Misread this as Facebook.com using Medium.com.

Can the title be corrected for clarity?

------
Artlav
WTF.

Would they sue paper manufacturers next? Paper is regularly used to pass notes
between criminals, terrorists and whatnot, so same logic should apply.

~~~
kej
U.S. law forbids doing business with designated terrorist groups. If Gaza
Office Supply provided the paper used to print Hamas propaganda, they'd be on
the hook, too.

------
mtgx
Will someone sue the Internet next? Because that's the bigger "medium for
terror".

~~~
dragonwriter
> Will someone sue the Internet next?

No, because the Internet isn't a juridical person that can be the target of a
lawsuit.

