The United States Supreme Court this Thursday rejected social network Twitter’s link to terrorist attacks by organizations such as the Islamic State (IS), ruling that the company may be liable for improperly deleting content from the group. The decision was made by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas with the unanimous support of all the court’s judges.
In the ruling, Thomas argues that Twitter’s responsibility for the 2017 terrorist attack that killed Jordanian Nouras al-Assaf in Turkey, at the request of his family, makes any communications provider liable for any crime just because they understand. that criminals use their systems. “Factors such as IS can use these platforms (…) for illegal and sometimes terrible purposes,” says the magistrate, “but the same can be said for mobile phones, e-mail or the Internet in general.”
The judge also explained that allegations by al-Assaf’s relatives that Twitter failed to act to stop the spread of pro-Islamic State messages did not prove that the social network knowingly tried to help the attack in which he lost his identity. life the jordanian It also emphasizes that this accusation holds the platform responsible for any attack carried out by the Islamic State anywhere in the world.
In a concurring opinion, progressive Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson found that rejecting the arguments of the Al Assaf family (and the arguments of the family of Nohmi Gonzalez, who denounced Google for a similar case, which was also rejected this Thursday by the same court. ) does not mean that the court will always be the same if a new lawsuit is filed. will make a decision.
Jackson explains that the principles used by the court to reject both claims “are not universal,” so it opens the door to evaluating “other contexts” in which social network companies’ liability for content their companies post is assessed. In both cases, Google and Twitter said the use of their platforms by IS terrorists did not mean the tech companies were knowingly aiding them.
The processes took on a transcendental aspect due to the enormous impact they could have on the regulation of digital platforms. The argument of the plaintiffs in both lawsuits is that the platforms are not fully exempt from liability because they are no longer limited to publishing the content that their users create. “Algorithms are everywhere, and the question is what are the platforms doing with them,” a lawyer for the family suing Google insisted during the trial.
Neither Twitter, nor Facebook, nor Google simply transmit messages, photos and videos, because since 2006 they have adopted an algorithmic system that recommends to each user the content that they consider the most relevant, families have condemned. This “recommendation” implies that the platforms are already aware of the material and appreciate it, so – according to the indictment – they should also take legal responsibility for it.
The US Supreme Court rejected this argument and took the side of theses of digital platforms, thereby avoiding a cataclysm in the regulation of cyberspace, which could have hard-to-foresee results. Joe Biden’s administration also took a stand on the matter when asked about its assessment of the legal process.
Source: El Diario
