Facebook ,Google and Twitter Sued for Allowing ISIS Messages to Spread

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Social media companies Facebook and Twitter, as well as Google, are being sued for allegedly enabling ISIS to spread its extremist messages ahead of the San Bernardino attack of 2015.

The families of three victims are behind the lawsuit, which claims these companies aided and abetted the terrorist attacks and are, therefore, liable for wrongful death, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"Even if Farook and Malik had never been directly in contact with ISIS, ISIS' use of social media directly influenced their actions on the day of the San Bernadino massacre," reads the lawsuit, referring to Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. The two were known ISIS supporters and pledged their allegiance to the group on Facebook ahead of the attack.

The main idea behind the lawsuit is that because Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube allow everyone, including ISIS members, to post on their platforms, they are somehow at fault for indoctrinating the couple.

A flawed and dangerous idea
This seems like the type of lawsuit that will get thrown out quite quickly, mainly because there are billions of people using social media. Facebook is heading towards the 2 billion milestone, Twitter has over 315 million monthly users and Google is probably used by most people with an Internet access, except for those where other similar tools are available and locally promoted, like China. YouTube, for its part, doesn't necessarily have a number of users who view content, but it does release the number of hours watched by users every month - 3.25 billion.

Among these billions of people who use three of some of the most popular tools on the Internet, there are some bad seeds, of course, including ISIS members and other extremists. Most of these people are aware of ISIS and haven't gone to the dark side just because they exist and promote their content online. And for the record, their content does get removed and their accounts shut down.

The companies, logically, deny liability and say that it's a tenuous and potentially very dangerous chain of blame that led to them being sued. Basically, any social network can be blamed for terrorism around the world simply because the attackers may have had the smallest connection to the platform. That idea is deeply flawed.