Facebook Immune from Liability Based on Third-Party Content - Lawfare
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In an interesting examination of the role of social media platforms and terrorism, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed two related complaints against Facebook on Thursday, May 18. Each set of complainants had asserted similar claims: that “Facebook has supported terrorist organizations by allowing those groups and their members to use its social media platform to further their aims.” Last year on Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes and Zoe Bedell wrote about this case—in addition to a series of posts addressing the possibility of suing social media platforms as fostering terrorist organizations both in the abstract and practically, given a 2016 lawsuit against Twitter, Google, and Facebook filed for just that reason. Ultimately, the two concluded that though technology companies would claim immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230)—claims the two admit are strong—this defense “should probably not prevail under either the extensive extant § 230 case law or under the plain text of the statute itself.” District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York ultimately disagreed. This post lays out the case’s factual and procedural background as well as court’s opinion dismissing the suit.****
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