US court acquits big techs in action on terrorism – 05/18/2023 – Tech

In a victory for social media platforms, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Twitter and Google in lawsuits that argued the companies should be held accountable for encouraging terrorism by hosting pro-Islamic State content.

The expectation was that a decision against the networks would set a precedent to allow companies to be sued for content posted by users. This could change the internet all over the world, since these companies are based in the United States.

Critics argued that it would be a violation of freedom of expression, while experts on the other side argued that the networks could not be shielded from accountability for harboring hate speech and violent and extremist content, as well as pushing users towards radicalization through algorithmic recommendations. .

In this Thursday’s decisions (18), however, the Supreme Court decided not to address the article of law that protects platforms for user content and only dealt with the encouragement of terrorism in the cases analyzed. Thus, the legal protection of the companies was maintained.

The case against Twitter involved an attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, in the early hours of January 1, 2017. The shooting, carried out by a supporter of the Islamic State terrorist group, killed 39 people. The family of one of the victims, Nawras Alassa, sued Twitter and other companies on the grounds that they violated the Anti-Terrorism Law, arguing that the Islamic State had used the networks as platforms to recruit militants.

In a unanimous decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court said that Alassaf’s family had failed to prove that “the defendants helped and abetted the Islamic State to carry out the attack”, as required by law.

“As alleged by the plaintiffs, the defendants created virtual platforms and knowingly failed to do ‘enough’ to remove Islamic State-linked users and Islamic State-related content — from hundreds of millions of users worldwide and a huge ocean of content. – from their platforms. However, the plaintiffs failed to show that the defendants intentionally provided any substantial assistance to Reina’s attack [nome da boate em Istambul] or knowingly participated in Reina’s attack – much less that the defendants aided the Islamic State in such a widespread and systemic way as to make them responsible for all of the Islamic State’s attacks.”

In another case, Google Vs. González, the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American exchange student who died in the Islamic State attacks in Paris in November 2015, argued that YouTube should be held accountable for promoting content from the terrorist group.

In addition to the Anti-Terrorism Act, the lawsuit challenged Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, an article of federal legislation from 1996 that protects platforms from lawsuits for content posted by users.

In this Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court, also unanimously, stated that it would not address the article, thus avoiding the change that, according to experts, could change the social networking market worldwide. In a brief decision on Thursday, the US court returned Google’s case to lower courts and said it should be analyzed “in light of Twitter’s decision”.

“We will continue our work to protect free expression online, combat harmful content, and support companies and creators who benefit from the Internet,” Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, said in a statement.

With that, nothing changes for now in the American discussion, which is also on the agenda in Brazil. PL 2630, known as the Fake News Bill, should enter the agenda of the Chamber in Brasília in the coming days, which obliges companies to act against content that encourages terrorism and hate crimes. Companies can be punished even before a court order if they generally fail to comply with the duty to mitigate and combat illegal content.

Currently, the 2014 Marco Civil da Internet is in force in Brazil, which establishes that companies can only be civilly punished for third-party content if they do not remove it after a court order, except in cases of non-consensual nudity or violation of intellectual property.