Court clears Google, Twitter and Facebook of involvement in terrorist attacks

The Supreme Court of the United States of America this Thursday grounded Google, Twitter and Facebook in lawsuits that sought to hold them accountable for terrorist attacks.

However, the judges evaded a ruling on a law that protects social media companies from being prosecuted for what users post.

The lawsuit, alleging that the companies allowed their platforms to be used to aid and incite an attack on a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people in 2017, was unanimously dismissed.

In the case of the American college student killed in the 2015 Islamic State terror attack on Paris, the court took the case to a lower court but said there appeared to be nothing that could be done.

The Supreme Court initially accepted Google’s case to decide whether companies’ legal protections for third-party social media posts under a 1996 law known as Section 230 were too broad.

Ultimately, the court ruled that there was no need to get to that point, since there was little connection between Google and responsibility for the Paris attack.

The bottom line, at least for now, is a win for the tech industry, which predicted Internet chaos if Google lost, but the Supreme Court may consider the matter at a later date.

“The Court will ultimately have to answer some important questions that it avoided in today’s opinions. [quinta-feira]. Questions about the scope of the platform’s section 230 immunity are significant and will certainly come up in other cases soon,” Anna Diakun, an attorney for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement.

Google General Counsel Halima DeLane Prado said the company will “continue to work to protect free speech online, combat harmful content, and support businesses and creators who benefit from the Internet.”

The families of the victims of the two attacks said the internet giants did not do enough to prevent extremist groups from using their platforms to radicalize and recruit people.

The family wants to sue Google over YouTube videos they say helped lure recruits from the self-proclaimed Islamic State and radicalize them.

Google owns YouTube.

The US Court of Appeals ruled that most of the claims are prohibited by the Internet Immunity Act.

The Supreme Court’s October decision to overturn that ruling caused alarm among Google and other tech companies.

“If we repeal Section 230, it will destroy many of the tools on the Internet,” said Google chief legal officer Kent Walker.

Yelp, Reddit, Microsoft, Craigslist, Twitter, and Facebook were some of the companies that have warned that job, restaurant, and product searches could be restricted if those platforms have to worry about processing due to the recommendations they provide and what their users want. .