The United States Supreme Court on Thursday rejected social network Twitter’s linking of terrorist attacks by organizations such as Islamic State (IS), in a ruling on the company’s alleged responsibility for not properly removing content from that group. .
The decision was drafted by Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, with unanimous support from all of the court’s justices.
In the ruling, Thomas argues that holding Twitter responsible for the 2017 terrorist attack that claimed the life of Jordanian Nouras Al Assaf in Turkey, as requested by his family, does not give any communications provider any Will be held accountable for wrongdoing because they know criminals use their system.
“Actors such as IS can use these platforms (…) for illegal, and sometimes sinister, purposes,” says the magistrate, “but the same can be said of mobile phones, email or the Internet.” .
The judge further states that the allegation by Al Assaf’s relatives that Twitter failed to stop the spread of pro-IS messages does not prove that the social network intentionally tried to facilitate the attack in which he lost his identity .
It also highlights that the charge would make the platform liable for any attack carried out by IS anywhere in the world.
In a concurring opinion, progressive Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the rejection of the arguments of the Al Assaf family (and the family of Nohmi Gonzalez, who sued Google for a similar case, was also rejected today by the Supreme ) This means that if new cases are introduced the court will always rule in the same sense.
Thus, Jackson points out that the principles used by the court to reject both lawsuits “are not universal,” which is why he leaves the door open for evaluating “other contexts” in which social media companies’ liability may be considered. are evaluated for the content that their users.
Both Google and Twitter maintained in both cases that the use of their platforms by IS terrorists did not mean that the technology companies provided them with conscious assistance. This view was also shared by the US government.
