The families of three victims killed in the Orlando terrorist attack last year have filed suit against tech giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google for providing “material support” to the Islamic State, reports USA Today.
“The lawsuit, first reported by Fox News, was filed Monday in federal court in the eastern district of Michigan on behalf of the families of Tevin Crosby, Javier Jorge-Reyes and Juan Ramo,” the report states.
The suit alleges, “Without Defendants Twitter, Facebook, and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible.”
The 29-year-old Muslim terrorist who targeted the gay nightclub Pulse, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to ISIS as he killed 49 and wounded 53 others. He wasn’t an actual member of the terror organization but was radicalized online by its propaganda.
Facebook released a statement assuring its practices include “swift action to remove content when it’s reported.” The lawsuit also faces an issue with a federal law that protects publishers from being liable for the speech of others.
This isn’t the first time the social media giants have been sued by terror victims and families. There is a lawsuit against all three mentioned here for the same reasons by the family of the college student from California who was killed in Paris in last year’s attack. But just last month, Twitter was cleared in a separate lawsuit brought on by the families of two American contractors killed in an ISIS-inspired attack in Jordan. The federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, “shielded Twitter as a publisher of third-party content,” the report states.
The Orlando lawsuit contends: “They create unique content by combining ISIS postings with advertisements in a way that is specifically targeted at the viewer. Defendants share revenue with ISIS for its content and profit from ISIS postings through advertising revenue. Although defendants have not created the posting, nor have they created the advertisement, Defendants have created new unique content by choosing which advertisement to combine with the posting.”
Facebook said it sympathizes with the families and victims and along with Google, Microsoft, and Twitter have promised to launch a database of terror-related media to help identify content for faster removal from its various feeds.
