Families of San Bernardino Shooting Sue Facebook, Google, Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Families of San Bernardino Shooting Sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

reuters.com

45 pointsgotchange59 comments

Wow, horrifying. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt for such a tradgedy and the emotional stress and grief it causes; but this is illogical, dangerous and counterproductive. Terrorism seeks to change our way of life and sueing a company for providing a platform for[0] free speech (which those companies actually already curtail) will not only cause problems to this already slippery slope, but simply displace terrorists to less visible places.

I hope this is not greed, because these companies are about as well funded as they are unconnected/innocent in this incident.

[0] added "provide a platform for" free speech for clarity.

Also, I am aware these platforms moderate, Facebook just committed to hiring 1400ish people to mod the site.

They're not being sued for providing a platform for free speech; they're being sued for providing material support to terrorists. Maybe it's impossible to do one without doing both, maybe it isn't. I don't know. Maybe it's just unprofitable.

If it's the deaths of your family that pay for a whole planet's free speech, you deserve to be compensated.

> If it's the deaths of your family that pay for a whole planet's free speech, you deserve to be compensated.

The way this is phrased really changed my perspective on this. Thanks.

I am the original comment poster and this is a very disingenuous way to frame my argument. If the above comment influenced you please consider:

- we have a legal framework for punishing law breakers. If these killers were affecting a political message (e.g. anti-US ideals like freedom, safety) our society has police and judicial means to extract "payment" or prevent this.

- At the civil level if someone/an entity is responsible for stripping civil liberties (this case through murder) I think we must draw a reasonable line. I don't have FB and am concerned w/ Google's privacy policies; however; to pretend a platform provided material support is absurd. Where does it end? Did googling weapons, posting pro-ISIS rants; a search interface and messaging/social network really count? This is reductionist?

- Consider this precedent and then why not sue Verizon for providing the data / internet and phone connectivity? What about Apple or Toshiba for the phone and hardware?

- I see this incident as a mental health issue, that is the underlying cause-- in my opinion.

- There really isn't a "price" for freedom or human life. No amount of money would likely convince me to give up my life. The responsible party is dead, so justice doesn't feel dispensed. Financially, they may be entitled to the estate assets.

- There is a degree of unfairness. Teaching tolerance and treating mental and health issues can help avoid this. This is a tradgedy, the family is likely to have damages >a million dollars (although there is no substitute for a human life) but we can't arbitrarily transfer those costs to a non-complicit party.

TL;DR I am glad you are open to changes in perspective; my comments are my opinion (as is the parent) but that framing struck me as reductionist and a bit of a disingenuous stawman. There are no easy answers unfortunately

Do you think corporations have the right to free speech? Do you think they ought to?

This isn't about a corporation's free speech. It's about people exercising their free speech using products built by companies.

A corporation spending money to host and spread speech in order to make a profit.

Ironic considering a for-profit organization is paying to host and spread your speech right there.

I suspect if a user began to promote and recruit for ISIL on HN that they would be banned.

So then your problem is with censorship, and not for profit organizations paying to host speech? Nice mobile goalposts.

And one that employs a paid moderation team...

would you feel radically different if they were suing multiple non-profit/charitable sites that hosted discussion forums and provided communication platforms where this stuff took place?

Yes. Anything that a person would be able to say, a group of people should be allowed to get together to say. The much-maligned "Corporate Personhood" is a founding principal of pretty much all of US law, in that it defines a corporation as simply being a proxy for all of it's members.

There are plenty of places where Corporations should currently be being prosecuted for fraud and false advertising. These are places where the people behind them would and should be just as liable for those things (and judges should pierce the corporate veil to prosecute those responsible). This is not those times.

I read that as the free speech of others, not the "speech" of the companies.

The whole "companies are people" is nonsense. They are simply machines like any other human invention, and can't reasonably be held to have objectives or speech of their own any more than an automobile can.

I edited for clarity

Corporations have a right to free speech, and it has been affirmed many many many times by Supreme Court.

> [The lawsuit] asserts that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided "material support" to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

> A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases.

Here's another recent example of this [0]. At first glance of the definition for material support [1], these lawsuits might seem (legally) reasonable. Luckily though, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act [2] makes these lawsuits fairly baseless. I can't imagine the consequences if social media providers were liable for all content posted on them... (Disclaimer: IANAL in the least)

[0]: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-lawsuits...

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

I'm wondering why not sue the ISPs and the utilities that provide electricity or the power generating nuclear reactors / coal power plants? Without any of these, it'd be impossible for ISIS to spread.

I think we should sue the chemical companies for not polluting enough to kill off the shooters.

There are all sorts of parallels between open Internet/encryption and the gun rights debate. It will be interesting to see how it all sorts out in the end. For example, in the future could we see a joint campaign by the NRA and the EFF?

Ironically relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/504/

That's like suing the coffee shops for the revolution

Or suing gun manufacturers for shoo--

https://www.rt.com/usa/369036-sandy-hook-gun-manufacturing-l...

..Oh

I don't think it's a valid comparison. Not making a statement on the Sandy Hook suit's merit, but clearly the San Bernardino couple didn't shoot up the place with tweets and wall posts.

Not a valid comparison? It's the exact comparison. What about suing the truck manufacturers when that terrorist ran over a bunch of people, or Boeing for 9/11, etc. Just because they are a manufacturer of firearms doesnt excuse them from this ideology.

Facebook and Twitter did not build the tools used to enact the shooting. The claim is that Facebook and Twitter allowed their platform to contain things that influenced the perpetrators. This is closer to blaming Charlie Hebdo for the terrorist attack against them, because the content they published clearly spawned the attack.

This is not a valid comparison because there is literally a federal law protecting gun manufacturers. There is not a similar law protecting twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...

Lack of a federal law doesn't necessarily make that comparison invalid; perhaps there should even be an analogous law protecting "free speech platforms" that is rooted in the first amendment, similar to how the law you cite it ostensibly rooted in the second.

No, the exact comparison would be a similar suit against the gun manufacturers for the San Bernardino shooting.

Except they used illegally modified guns that were against the law to own in California (and many other states without the proper license).

A tweet isn't designed to kill someone. A truck isn't designed to kill someone.

Unless you think an AR15 is specifically designed for killing exotic animals.

And a knife isn't designed to kill someone. And here in Texas we use AR15s for killing wild hogs every single day.

A knife isn't designed to kill someone, neither is an axe, ice pick, etc.

Wild hogs aren't exotic animals, which is why you can use normal hunting rifles, and don't need an AR15.

Wait not suing Apple?

To clarify Apple refused to unlock the phone, thus I expected them to be a target of the lawsuit as well. Not saying they should have been sued or that this lawsuit has any merit.

What did they do? All they did was refuse to unlock the perpetrator's phone. How do they have standing in that?

They enabled the perpetrator's planning and communications by supplying him the phone. I mean, they are just as culpable as Facebook, Google and Twitter...

...i.e. not at all, but a large and wealthy company to try and extort a settlement from.

By this logic you can sue the clothing company that provided them with clothes during their felony

That's pretty much the point the GP was trying to make.

I think the guy was wearing underwear at the time, so Hanes? can be sued too.

If they are sueing for allowing ISIS propaganda to be spread on Social Media, they might as well sue for not policing iMessage as well, I guess.

Section 230, Communications Decency Act, no ISP is liable for what third parties do on their site. There's an intense amount of case law backing it up. This lawsuit will likely be dismissed before they even get to a court. It's amazing to me that people even still try.

There's social media liability insurance you can get just incase someone tries to drag you into a frivolous lawsuit. The cases all get thrown out, but not before potentially $20-50k in legal bills. The insurance is really just there to cover the legal bills until the plaintiff pays it back after dismissal (which can take a while).

If you run a hosting service or a small social network and don't have enough money to hire a staff lawyer, definitely check out getting some liability insurance to protect yourself from crap like this. It runs about $100/mo for a $5k deductible up to $1 million in coverage, but those numbers probably vary a lot.

That's an interesting one. It seems like it wouldn't work at first but then thinking about more maybe there is something there.

These companies want to position themselves as the new media, the gatekeepers of "truth" so to speak. That's why they are pushing "Fake News" and moderating it, classifying it etc. It is basically a strategy to fill the void left by the older mass media companies, which are seen as failing an unable to manufacture consent effectively. So in a way they are signaling "Come to us now, we'll advertise your stuff and mark you competitors ideas as fake". It's a good move really. From a business standpoint, can't blame them there.

I am trying to conduct a mental experiment and imagine what would happen if say CNN gave al-Baghdadi a few minutes here and there to express his views. Or letting the local KKK chapter air their ideas once in a while. Many would agree CNN then might be complicit in inciting violence for example and would share a bit of responsibility. So if these other companies what to play "gatekeepers of truth" game they should also be responsible too?

Yet another frivolous lawsuit in the land of the USA.

There were quite a few comments about the dishonest culture of the Indian bodyshops on the Infosys thread yesterday. And today I wake up to an Uber criminal probe and Facebook, Google and Twitter getting sued.

So as a student all I want to know, is how do I tell I am not working for the "let's do whatever it takes" assholes.

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