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Judge Tosses Lawsuit Blaming Twitter For Aiding ISIS In Security Contractor’s Death

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/RICHARD DREW
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/RICHARD DREW

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming Twitter was responsible for the death of an American military contractor killed during an Islamic State (ISIS) attack in Jordan last year.

The complaint, which was filed by the victim’s wife, Tamara Fields, asserted that Twitter bore responsibility for ISIS’ proliferation and “the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world.”

The plaintiff also argued that Twitter’s direct messaging capabilities made it more than a third-party platform, as ISIS uses this feature to recruit members.

Judge William Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California disagreed, saying the connection between Twitter and the shooting death of Lloyd Fields was “tenuous at best.”

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“Apart from the private nature of direct messaging, plaintiffs identify no other way in which their direct messaging theory seeks to treat Twitter as anything other than a publisher of information provided by another information content provider,” he wrote.

Fields has 20 days to amend the complaint.

Twitter and other social media companies have clamped down on terrorism-related content. Earlier this year, Twitter was reported to have shut down more than 125,000 accounts that were associated with extremism since 2015.

But even with some success, terrorist attack victims and their families are going after social media companies for being somewhat complicit in spreading the message of militant groups like ISIS.

The family of a Paris attack victim, college senior Nohemi Gonzalez, filed a lawsuit against Google, Twitter, and Facebook, alleging the platforms “knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use their social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda.”

That lawsuit is pending.