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Excerpt from www.vox.com
Just after the clock struck midnight, a man entered a nightclub in Istanbul, where hundreds of revelers welcomed the first day of 2017. He then swiftly shot and killed 39 people and injured 69 others — all on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Among those killed was Jordanian citizen Nawras Alassaf. In response, his family filed a civil suit later that year against Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube. They believed that these tech companies knowingly allowed ISIS and its supporters to use each platform’s “recommendation” algorithms for recruiting, fundraising, and spreading propaganda, normalizing radicalization and attacks like the one that took their son’s life.
Their case, Twitter v. Taamneh, argued that tech companies profit from algorithms that selectively surface content based on each user’s personal data. While these algorithms neatly package recommendations in newsfeeds and promoted posts, continuously serving hyper-specific entertainment for many, the family’s lawyers argued that bad-faith actors have gamed these systems to further extremist campaigns. Noting Twitter’s demonstrated history of online radicalization, the suit anchored on this question: If social media platforms are being used to promote terrorist content, does their failure to intervene constitute aiding and abetting?
The answer, decided unanimously by the Supreme Court last year, was no.
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