4 ms·

Facebook Sued for $1B for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror

17 points by exolymph 10y ago

cft 10y ago
I do not understand why this is unclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... 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."
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  because lawyers collect fees from emotional claimants even if it gets dismissed in a summary judgement.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  It isn't unclear, at all. That said, the article doesn't provide the full details of the case. If, for instance, people had reported posts that made specific threats, and Facebook explicitly acknowledged the reports but declined to act (while removing other posts), there might be a case. But if not, and they're just the communication medium, there's unlikely to be a case here.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      > 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".
- dogma1138 10y ago
  It's not as simple, for example ISP's or "interactive computer service" providers do have to comply with DMCA, and probably quite a few other legislations, meaning that the protection from liability is not absolute. Facebook also isn't just a bulletin board, or an aggregate since they do construct your feed, hence one could potentially argue that they are not a service provider but are the "information content provider" as defined by the Communications Decency Act. That argument could potentially be even made stronger by the fact that facebook does employ selective moderation, they do remove certain content that goes against their TOS including "extremist" content they have deleted groups/pages of ISIS and other organizations in the past, so one could argue that they might be "unwilling" to act in this case (if that indeed is the case). ANAL but It could quite likely not be a case that would be dismissed in a summary judgement, and considering that quite a bit of internal information about what and how facebook moderates, and more importantly how it chooses which information to show to you would potentially be revealed in the lawsuit there's a good chance that Facebook would likely go into a settlement, probably not a billion dollars but also probably not a small penny either.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > It's not as simple, for example ISP's or "interactive computer service" providers do have to comply with DMCA No, they don't. The DMCA gives them an optional procedure, which, if followed, provides a "safe harbor" exemption from liability they might have under other laws. To the extent that the CDA has already extinguished liability, there is no benefit from complying with the DMCA.
Artlav 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
6stringmerc 10y ago
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.
kyledrake 10y ago
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_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... 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.
rememberlenny 10y ago
Misread this as Facebook.com using Medium.com. Can the title be corrected for clarity?
jayess 10y ago
The complaint filed with the court is available here: https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/460178/1-0.html https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/460178/1-0.h... 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 10y ago
  > 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.
mtgx 10y ago
Will someone sue the Internet next? Because that's the bigger "medium for terror".
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Will someone sue the Internet next? No, because the Internet isn't a juridical person that can be the target of a lawsuit.
  - epimetheus 10y ago
    What about one of the major cellphone carriers when they discover some terrorists use them? As a business how do you keep "terrorists" from using your service? I doubt even FB has the capabilities to monitor every single user, same with the carriers. You can't profile them and refuse them service, by law, so what's there to do, except just operate as the $1B as an "operating cost?"
reuven 10y ago
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_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...), 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.

17 points by exolymph 10y ago

cft 10y ago

I do not understand why this is unclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... 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."

cloudjacker 10y ago
because lawyers collect fees from emotional claimants even if it gets dismissed in a summary judgement.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
It isn't unclear, at all. That said, the article doesn't provide the full details of the case. If, for instance, people had reported posts that made specific threats, and Facebook explicitly acknowledged the reports but declined to act (while removing other posts), there might be a case. But if not, and they're just the communication medium, there's unlikely to be a case here.
dragonwriter 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > 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".
dogma1138 10y ago
It's not as simple, for example ISP's or "interactive computer service" providers do have to comply with DMCA, and probably quite a few other legislations, meaning that the protection from liability is not absolute. Facebook also isn't just a bulletin board, or an aggregate since they do construct your feed, hence one could potentially argue that they are not a service provider but are the "information content provider" as defined by the Communications Decency Act. That argument could potentially be even made stronger by the fact that facebook does employ selective moderation, they do remove certain content that goes against their TOS including "extremist" content they have deleted groups/pages of ISIS and other organizations in the past, so one could argue that they might be "unwilling" to act in this case (if that indeed is the case). ANAL but It could quite likely not be a case that would be dismissed in a summary judgement, and considering that quite a bit of internal information about what and how facebook moderates, and more importantly how it chooses which information to show to you would potentially be revealed in the lawsuit there's a good chance that Facebook would likely go into a settlement, probably not a billion dollars but also probably not a small penny either.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > It's not as simple, for example ISP's or "interactive computer service" providers do have to comply with DMCA No, they don't. The DMCA gives them an optional procedure, which, if followed, provides a "safe harbor" exemption from liability they might have under other laws. To the extent that the CDA has already extinguished liability, there is no benefit from complying with the DMCA.

Artlav 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

6stringmerc 10y ago

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.

kyledrake 10y ago

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_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... 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.

rememberlenny 10y ago

Misread this as Facebook.com using Medium.com. Can the title be corrected for clarity?

jayess 10y ago

The complaint filed with the court is available here: https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/460178/1-0.html https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/460178/1-0.h... 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 10y ago
> 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.

mtgx 10y ago

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

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Will someone sue the Internet next? No, because the Internet isn't a juridical person that can be the target of a lawsuit.
- epimetheus 10y ago
  What about one of the major cellphone carriers when they discover some terrorists use them? As a business how do you keep "terrorists" from using your service? I doubt even FB has the capabilities to monitor every single user, same with the carriers. You can't profile them and refuse them service, by law, so what's there to do, except just operate as the $1B as an "operating cost?"

reuven 10y ago

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_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...), 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.