Twitter Sued For Giving Voice To Islamic State (reuters.com) 191
An anonymous reader writes: An American woman named Tamara Fields has sued Twitter in U.S. federal court, saying the social network gave the Islamic State a voice to spread its propaganda. Fields's husband died on November 9, when the terrorist organization attacked a police training center in Amman, Jordan. The complaint alleges, "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible." At the end of 2015, Twitter stepped up its efforts (or at least its official policies) to block such content from its site. But the company has been under fire for over a year from citizens and law enforcement officials over the activity of various terrorist groups on its platform. Fields's attorneys hope that her husband's death will give her proper standing to challenge Twitter in court.
The enemy of my enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
Suing an online commentary platform for allowing comments is ridiculous. However, anything that damages social media is welcome as far as I'm concerned.
It will be a glorious day when Twitter and the rest of its ilk disappear into history just like myspace.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
She can't get money from suing ISIS. But she possibly can get money from suing Twitter.
Corollary to the Golden Rule: he who has the gold gets sued.
Re: (Score:1)
Since the corporation knew what their network was being used for, is your argument that they are entitled to profit from users (the "product") from using their network to organize the killing of others?
Re:The enemy of my enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
One of these is true:
1) Twitter employees read every one of the 500 million tweets per day that get posted and agree with the content of them all.
2) You're making accusations despite having both a complete lack of evidence and a complete lack of understanding of the subject.
Re:The enemy of my enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
One of these is true:
1) Twitter employees read every one of the 500 million tweets per day that get posted and agree with the content of them all.
2) You're making accusations despite having both a complete lack of evidence and a complete lack of understanding of the subject.
BZZT. That's a 10 yard penalty for a False Dilemma fallacy. Try again.
3) People have reported the offending content and Twitter left it up in the name of free speech -- while punishing people who disagree with fake feminist con artists like Zoe Quin or Brianna Wu, because "freeze peach" is so 1990s.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, rewrite the first one as:
"Twitter employees read every one of the 250 million tweets per day that some shitcock somewhere whined about for some reason and agree with the content of them all."
Re: (Score:2)
OK, rewrite the first one as:
"Twitter employees read every one of the 250 million tweets per day that some shitcock somewhere whined about for some reason and agree with the content of them all."
Either/or fallacy -- and doesn't match Twitter's current policy. They claim to have rules, they're mostly secret and vague rules and won't explain when you break them, but will ban you outright when you cross them. But only if you don't have the right friends.
Disagree with a sociopath who happens to have the right politics? Ban.
Point out a con artist doing "good things" is lying and openly scamming people out of thousands? Ban.
Point out a troll who is harassing hundreds of people is a self admitted pedo
Re: (Score:2)
Bad comparisons IMO. There's two measures you can look at to see if a company has responsibility for the bad uses of its product: if the product is used frequently for nefarious purposes (meaning: is there really a problem?), and how feasible it is for the company to keep its product out of the hands of evil-doers.
First, with hardware and grocery stores, those supplies have other, non-nefarious purposes which they are used for 99.99999% of the time. It's extremely rare that people buy supplies at those pl
Re: (Score:3)
Bad comparisons IMO. There's two measures you can look at to see if a company has responsibility for the bad uses of its product: if the product is used frequently for nefarious purposes (meaning: is there really a problem?), and how feasible it is for the company to keep its product out of the hands of evil-doers.
First, with hardware and grocery stores, those supplies have other, non-nefarious purposes which they are used for 99.99999% of the time. It's extremely rare that people buy supplies at those places to build bombs. The last time I think I heard about someone building actual bombs from supplies from grocery and hardware stores, it involved an assassin android sent from the future to 1984.
For Swith & Wesson, while guns certainly are designed to be efficient killing machines, and they are used for bad things too often (unlike home-made pipe bombs), the gun companies, through their dealers (who they're required to sell through by federal law), DO take steps to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands: they use federal instant background checks, again mandated by federal law and using a federally-run system, to make sure that blacklisted people can't buy a gun. As far as I'm concerned, the gunmakers have had this problem solved for them by the government itself taking on that responsibility; if the government doesn't think its own background check is sufficient, then the government needs to improve its own checking system.
In the case of Twitter, it appears that there has been a BIG problem with terrorist groups using them for propaganda, and that they've done little to nothing about it even though everyone knew about it. That to me shows that they are certainly culpable in a civil suit. By comparison, would terrorist videos uploaded to YouTube stay up there very long, or their accounts be allowed to persist? I don't think so.
Arguably, news networks have done the same thing, for giving those horrid bastards so much news coverage (Unlike many nowadays, I have no problem with muslims or people from the middle east, just those who support Daesh). There are over 500 million tweets per day; are you suggesting Twitter hire a 10th of the US population to read and moderate Twitter, and aside of the absurdity of this, that they're will be no abuse?
I'm sure they do the best they can, but at the end of the day, there is no machine that
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why hire humans when a computer can do the job? Sure, there would be some false positives, but that's where humans can discern the difference.
Why don't you go ahead and prototype the kind of AI required for this? Show us all how easy it is.
Exactly. False positives is the least of your worries, getting even a remotely accurate scanner would require resources far beyond what we have today, and it'd still never be nearly decent. Humans aren't a good judge either, because what's extremist for one person is not for another. There is no easy solution to this, no matter how much you wish to believe there is.
Something I intentionally left out of my
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Believe it or not, there's actually a legal precedent for this:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08... [nytimes.com]
Probably a lot more too.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like the incitement to violence that the US indulged in the lead up to the war in Iraq?
Ah, only when others do it, gotcha.
Re: (Score:2)
Australia asshole, we don't Star Wars, were just stupid enough to follow the US into them, though we just refused any further involvement in your current war for profit.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, you're the morons who couldn't even win a war against some birds.
And the country that treated Aborigines worse than dirt.
You're pathetic.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, yes from the country that treated the natives far worse, and is the most greedy ignorant and arrogant dumbfucks on the planet. Add the relevant B and your UI is most accurate.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you're not. You're talking about the Iraq War, which happened well over a decade ago. I'm in the US too and never supported that war either, so why the fuck are you complaining to me about it?
Re: (Score:2)
Hitler was the product of US involvement in WWI, and actually the US Civil War. Does that mean we're responsible for the Holocaust?
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, if you hadn't done your usual stunt of staying out until as much profit as possible had been made, the war would have been a lot shorter. America is directly responsible for much of the terrorism in the world thru it's actions supporting terrosits in many many countries, and it's repeated meddling in places where they have no business.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm touchy because I never voiced any support for my country's actions, so I resent that somehow I'm assumed to.
So, NO, the criticism is not valid at all. It's no different than criticizing gangsta rap to some random black person. Or worse, saying "your country sucks because its cops shoot unarmed black people" to a black American who got shot or beaten by the cops.'
Re: (Score:2)
I completely disagree. He was criticizing me personally because I was criticizing ISIS and calling their propaganda incitement to violence. You can think that's a fallacy if you want, I don't care.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yes, criticising deluded assholes is a bonus, but not the first intent.
You are reaping what you sowed.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the only difference huh, not the sex slaves that ISIS has, the people they burn in cages, the children they have participate in beheadings, the islamic motivation of the group, and so on? That's all about the same to you? So edgy, much wow.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry you're right. There is a difference I recognize: The one's currently in control have historically been and currently are responsible for far more violence and its attendant miseries than some currently sensationalist fundamentalist groups who may have different methods you like to point to as being a reason for passing judgement as a 'lesser' form of violence. Groups that, ironically enough, exist in large part as a result of Western hegemonies' full of itself.
Go live somewhere there's drones c
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, don't take away my Twitter! It's how I know if the train is on time or not! (And incidentally the only reason I got an account.)
"PostHe said on a public forum... (Score:2)
Heh. Yeah, blasting your opinions on social media is really lame. Thanks for posting on Slashdot so we can hear about it.
Re: (Score:2)
I blame Twitter for a large share of Gamergate, for example.
Re: (Score:2)
It's ilk like Slashdot?
Re: (Score:2)
I just hope that Twitter argues in court that the US government carries most of the responsibility for causing the rise of ISIS.
Re: (Score:2)
What's next? (Score:5, Interesting)
We should sue the courts for giving this lunatic a voice.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah. I'm guessing "fuck free speech if I can get some money".
Also:
1. "most-feared" is more about the news agencies reporting. Statistically you are in more danger from your own family/friends.
2. Al-Qaeda used to be "the most-feared" and they managed it without Twitter.
3. Finally, what evidence does she have that those specific terroris
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. "most-feared" is more about the news agencies reporting. Statistically you are in more danger from your own family/friends.
Umm...That really, heavily, depends on where you live. In this case it was Jordan. Big difference than in the US.
2. Al-Qaeda used to be "the most-feared" and they managed it without Twitter.
Al Qaeda never managed to establish a caliphate.
3. Finally, what evidence does she have that those specific terrorists actually used Twitter to recruit/plan/whatever? As opposed to, say, text messages.
Considering that it's well known to be their primary recruitment platform (even by their own admission,) I'm sure you can find plenty.
Re: (Score:2)
Especially number 1. I have zero fear of ISIS but there are some local threats that cause me to carry a pistol.
Re: What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)
What proof does she have that her husband's killers were recruited by IS via Twitter? Absolutely none. Most of IS's recruiting is done physically in person, and for obvious reasons (Twitter is a hell of a lot easier for the NSA and military to track). Hell, almost every story I've heard about people joining IS is virtually the same: they met with a person at their mosque who saw them as an impressionable target and convinced them over a long period of time that they are being oppressed by the west and need
Re: (Score:2)
Most of IS's recruiting is done physically in person, and for obvious reasons (Twitter is a hell of a lot easier for the NSA and military to track).
The FBI, the government, some analysts, and ISIS's own messages on Twitter disagree with you. Also the link below explains why no, the NSA can't reliability track this process. You're right eventually you meet in person, but that's just like any other job interview. The first place you hear from it is typically in a paper, then you apply via an agency, and you don't actually meet someone until the last part of your recruitment process.
http://www.ijreview.com/2015/0... [ijreview.com]
FBI Director James Comey described ISIS’s Twitter strategy at the Aspen Institute in July:
“ISIL’s M.O. is they broadcast on Twitter, get people to follow them, then move them to Twitter Direct Messaging while they evaluate whether they’re a potential liaison either to travel or to kill where they are. Then they’ll move them to an encrypted mobile-messaging app, so they go dark to us.”
Re: (Score:2)
Statistically you are in more danger from your own family/friends.
Especially children. [gocomics.com] Won't somebody think of them?
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah. I'm guessing "fuck free speech if I can get some money".
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with this.
The first (free speech) amendment of the US Constitution protects you and me from the government. It does not protect you and me from each other.
This is a civil lawsuit between this woman and Twitter.
Re: (Score:3)
At first it may seem lunacy, except for the fact that Twitter does ban accounts in a very selective way - unfortunately for Twitter, there is a very well documented trend of banning accounts critical of Islam. For this very reason Twitter made themselves very susceptible to this lawsuit.
Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS (Score:3)
Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Thing about bans, they still need to be evenly enforced, and twitter seems to selectively enforcing their rules. Facebook is currently in a lawsuit over this for allowing "kill Israelis" pages and only banning "kill Arabs" pages. Companies are not evenly enforcing their policies and actually being very offensive towards some groups.
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter represents the digital infrastructure to allow a horde of mostly mindless feather brains to scream into the void from their digital perches. Twitter does not provide the voice, it purely provides the digital medium for you to hook up your digital device on the digital network you pay for. Policies will never been uniformly applied because Twitter only reacts to a sufficient number of shrill cries from it members. The more feather brains that squawk about something annoying them, the more likely Twi
Re: (Score:3)
Facebook is currently in a lawsuit over this for allowing "kill Israelis" pages and only banning "kill Arabs" pages.
I couldn't find that with a Google search. Could you give me a source for that?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, yes, Shurat HaDin, the Israel governent operation that brings frivolous lawsuits against critics of Israel.
This isn't a valid social science experiment, it's just lawyers and hasbara operatives gathering allegations to fill up the documents in what they openly admit are frivolous lawsuits to harass Palestinians and their supporters.
What they've proven is that Facebook is more likely to respond to a threatening picture of an adult with a gun than of a child with a slingshot. It would be interesting to se
Re: (Score:2)
This is why bans on any form of speech are a bad idea. They inevitably end up imbalanced and biased at some point. Even something as simple as "no messages calling for anyone to be killed" are hard to apply to posts like "He should be removed from office by any means necessary." Is that a death threat? Should it be censored by the calls to be killed? These subjective calls are impossible for a neutral third party to apply -- they end up taking sides, and when your communication medium takes sides, then they
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like this lawsuit was filed about behavior before that TOS went into effect.
Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is in the US. It is fueled by one thing and one thing only: GREED.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS (Score:5, Insightful)
There's greed everywhere. We just do it better than everybody else.
Re: (Score:2)
Children's first word in the rest of the world is not 'sue'.
Re: (Score:2)
No, this is in the US. It is fueled by one thing and one thing only: GREED.
It seems to be that it may very well be about the results of politically correct behavior on the part of social media that tends to ignore violence and threats as long as it comes from the "right" people or is directed at the "right" victims. There are other cases like it that help demonstrate the problem.
Facebook and Israel: What’s Not to ‘Like’? Lots, It Seems [wsj.com]
An experiment: Make one anti-Israel page and one anti-Palestinian page. Wait to see what happens.
After all, youtube didn't pick up the nickname of "jihad tube" for nothing.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is the scale of the problem. Twitter has, in fact, disabled plenty of accounts. But it's a frikkin gigantic service. How many millions of Twitter accounts are there? How many millions of tweets go out per day? And you have so sort through all of that to find the ISIS accounts and tweets.
To do it algorithmically, you need to write software that can reliably identify... with a minimum of false positives, mind you... the genuine ISIS users from: people talking about ISIS, people reporting on I
Re: (Score:2)
And even if you terminate an account, it's trivial for the person or people behind it to set up another account. I've experienced this personally. A person was harassing me and a bunch of other people on Twitter so we reported her. Her account was banned. She started a new account and harassed us again. We reported her again and she was banned again. She made a new account again, etc. The cycle would repeat sometimes dozens of times a day. In fact, she's still on Twitter today (though she's backed o
Re: (Score:2)
First the SJWs went after gamers. Then they went after @nero. Now they're going after ISIS.
Damn them all to hell.
Re: (Score:2)
None of those items apply in this situation, though......
ISIS does not have terrorist groups in America because they targeting some specific demographic. They do not care where you were born, or the colour of your skin, and they have killed loads of American Muslims. They just hate America, and Americans, which is a nationality and explicated left out of this list.
So Twitter recentally announced that you can promote violence against and Americans?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
ISIS has most of the protections that SJWs have to attack, bully, etc.
I saw what you did there. [wikipedia.org]
Re: Fueled by recent change to Twitters TOS (Score:5, Informative)
I saw what you did there.
While your average SJW isn't running around trying to kill someone, they are threatening, doxing, harassing and trying to get people fired from their job because they don't like what you say. Fun thing though, ISIS and SJW's in general use the same blockbot... [reddit.com] You of course can't forget either the number of SJW's who either openly support, or opine support for ISIS either.
Re: (Score:2)
Fun thing though, ISIS and SJW's in general use the same blockbot... [reddit.com]
Your point?
You of course can't forget either the number of SJW's who either openly support, or opine support for ISIS either.
Citation?
Hmmmm.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Caruso style! [instantrimshot.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the analogy goes ISIS grew because of Twitter and the car accident wouldn't have happened because it would had been driven if the road didn't exist. Of course with that analogy the woman should sue computer, OS, and phone makers, telcos, and electric companies for letting ISIS having an audience.
Re: (Score:1)
The internet doesn't work with out electricity...sue Benjamin Franklin!
Re: (Score:1)
If they coordinated their attacks with the spoken word, whom would she sue?
How about writing each other using a quality Bic pen available at your local Walmart in a variety of colors? Whom would she sue then?
Let's not forget... (Score:2, Interesting)
One Word... (Score:1)
Seriously? (Score:1)
She should sue all the telecoms who own the networks that this traffic was sent over while she's at it!
So stupid, 'Shoot the Messenger' (Score:2)
Yes, it can be used for hate or trolling, but hey, you enjoy Free Speech right? (Or as much as we have in the modern World)
I hate to hear about BS like this.........sue anything you can for monetary gain and for personal reasons..........I'd say 'gtfo' lol
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's giving them WAY too much credence. I'd go with non-intelligent. The constant demands from these "people" can be summed up as follows:
"We only want to hear / see / otherwise come into contact with things that we approve of, and if we come into contact with something that does not meet that criteria, then it must be destroyed and it's creator punished."
Thi
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, this is more like shooting the *train driver* for carrying the messenger on his train.
The messenger would be the ones who sent the tweet.
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately for Twitter, they have been shooting specific messengers already - banning accounts critical of Islam - and so they have a good chance of actually losing this lawsuit.
Understandable but totally misdirected (Score:2)
All depends... (Score:2)
If people get activated, enticed, angry, violent from written word (pictures/videos), where is the problem?
The written word (pictures/videos) somewhere, or the readiness to fall for it and being unable see where this is coming from and leading to, needing a constant nurse to look after so they don't start killing each other. So it's a pretty hopeless situation.
Seems that's reality..
How so?
common sense (Score:1)
The logic of "Fuck You" (Score:4, Funny)
The magical landscape of the internet is a perfect place to project all that rage. The public has no clue about how it works or how it is controlled, so any claim about responsibility can seem credible. If she had sued Toyota because they seem to be the official truck of ISIS, everyone would know she was off base and acting irrationally. But you go after the likes of Twitter and it makes good headlines.
In some ways Twitter has set themselves up for this. Twitter, Facebook, and other such services want all the power and money that goes with being a de facto public utility like a phone company. Then want to avoid the rules that apply to common carriers because it would limit their behavior. If they had common carrier status it would protect them from this kind of law suit. They want it both ways: the reach of a public utility without any of the responsibility. The only good part of this whole mess is that they will have to deal with a publicity nightmare because of their greed and arrogance.
Re: (Score:2)
so she (and her lawyers) go after a big name that everyone knows.
There's more to this than going after anyone with money. People have been fairly critical of Twitter's response to terrorism. Accounts suspended and then released, no attempts at blocking, no attempts at curating. They have a formal policy now, but that was only introduced after 4chan went all out exposing an incredible number of Twitter accounts used by ISIS, and now Twitter is saying they are actively doing something despite the face ISIS's activities and the scale of their activities on Twitter have been
Re: (Score:2)
Your entir
Re: (Score:2)
RequiredSnark, AC does have one good point -- your opening sentence is an assertion... needs an "I suspect" in there somewhere. She may not be upset at all... she might be coldly calculating after the death of a husband she didn't like in the first place the best way to make money from the bastard's passing. She might be blackmailed by some third party into launching this lawsuit and not really want to do it at all. She might have motivations that have nothing to do with Free Speech, the spread of ISIS, or
Can the rest of the world sue this woman (Score:2)
for allowing the US gov to spread democracy through force and allowing events that lead to the raise of terrorist groups?
Re:Can the rest of the world sue this woman (Score:4, Funny)
Sue Greece. They started all this democracy crap in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
A society based on slavery, in which about 10% had the vote
Less than 10% of the US population gives enough money to their legislators to effectively command their attention. For the rest of us, the whole representative dog and pony show is sufficient to keep us pacified. Instead of herding us into silver mines at the point of a spear, we play along. So yes, a democracy just like the Athenians.
All kinds of old stupidity (Score:2)
Same old stupidity, to the point of being tiresome. Litigation lotto. Shooting the messenger. Breaking the honey-pot instead of shooting the bear. Etc., etc...
Next up... (Score:2)
Who is she going to sue next? Mosques where radical muslims meet? Cell phone companies that allow them to [gasp] TALK to each other???? Or how about those suspicious e-mail providing companies?
This woman is an idiot.
Re: (Score:2)
not sure (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It all depends on whether:
a) Twitter was alerted to the accounts and didn't shut them down.
and
b) the case is about the previous or about Twitter not shutting down accounts BEFORE being alerted to them.
Twitter can't be expected to see all tweets coming through and somehow determine which ones are bad and which aren't. Is the account saying "Death to America!" because they want to blow us up? Or is it saying that because it's some sort of in-joke between friends online? Software won't be able to tell and t
Re: (Score:2)
Here be dragons (Score:2)
This case is a journey into barely touched judicial territory of things like civil aiding and abetting and first amendment civil law.
I think Americans' (rightful) pride in the First Amendment has blinded many to the fact that legislators have basically stopped paying attention to the whole area of speech, and so there's a huge amount we'll-know-it-when-we-see-it arbitrary case law around things like free vs. criminal speech, what speech acts are protected from civil liability, etc.
This is absolutely not about free speech (Score:2)
I think Americans' (rightful) pride in the First Amendment has blinded many to the fact that legislators have basically stopped paying attention to the whole area of speech, and so there's a huge amount we'll-know-it-when-we-see-it arbitrary case law around things like free vs. criminal speech, what speech acts are protected from civil liability, etc.
You seem utterly uninformed on the topic you're publicly commenting. Free speech means the GOVERNMENT can't decide on behalf of the citizens what they can or can't say. As Twitter is not part of the government, any reference to free speech is idiotic.
They should also sue Toyota (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Does Totyota selectively sell cars to ISIS and not to Kurds or people critical of Islam? If that were true, you would have a point.
Re: (Score:2)
What a Knife Balancing Act This is! (Score:2)
On one hand, we have the "Freedom of Speech" with the Right to be Heard, no matter how unpopular the subject.
On the other hand, we have Control and Censorship to deter things and expressions that can and have been harmful to society as a whole.
What will this result in?
Let's all watch and see what happens here. No matter the result, it will have a far-reaching effect on things to come after.
Did they try saying (Score:2)
Total Loss (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)