The United States apex court has disclosed that it will hear two cases seeking to hold social media companies financially responsible for terrorist attacks.
According to local reports, the cases are seen as an important test of the federal law that generally makes internet companies exempt from liability for the material users post on their networks.
It was gathered that in the cases the court agreed to hear, relatives of people killed in terrorist attacks in France and Turkey had sued Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Specifically, they accused the companies of helping terrorists spread their message and radicalize new recruits. However, one of the cases was reportedly thrown out, mostly under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, while the other was allowed to proceed.
Reports have it that the Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the cases this winter with decisions before the court recesses for the summer, usually in late June.
The reports stated that one of the cases the justices will hear involves Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen studying in Paris. The Cal State Long Beach student was one of 130 people killed in Islamic State group attacks in November 2015. The attackers struck cafes, outside the French national stadium and inside the Bataclan Theater. Gonzalez died in an attack at La Belle Equipe bistro.
Alarmed by the act, Gonzalez’s relatives sued Google, which owns YouTube, noting that the platform had helped the Islamic State group by allowing it to post hundreds of videos that helped incite violence and recruit potential supporters.
In the suit, Gonzalez’s relatives said the company’s computer algorithms recommended those videos to viewers most likely to be interested in them. However, a judge reportedly dismissed the case and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling.
Meanwhile, the other case the court agreed to hear involves Jordanian citizen Nawras Alassaf, who died in the 2017 attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul where a gunman affiliated with the Islamic State killed 39 people.
According to reports, Alassaf’s relatives filed a suit against Twitter, Google and Facebook for aiding terrorism, arguing that the platforms helped the Islamic State grow and did not go far enough in trying to curb terrorist activity on their platforms. A lower court let the case proceed.
Specifically, the two cases are Reynaldo Gonzalez et al. v Google, 21-1333, and Twitter et al. v Mehier Taamneh, 21-1496.
