![]() ![]() ![]() Furthermore, theplaintiffs provided no evidence that the ISIS member who carried out the 2017 attack ever had a Twitter account, or that Twitter had knowledge of any particular ISIS content they failed to remove, or that the service was used in the planning of the particular attack. But, likewise, no one disputes that Twitter had an extensive content moderation program dedicated to removing terrorist content. No one disputes that ISIS made effective use of Twitter for purposes of propaganda and recruitment. This, the plaintiffs argued, helped ISIS become “the most feared terrorist group in the world” and substantially assisted the group in carrying out the 2017 (and presumably other) attacks.įrom this description, it should be clear that the Taamneh plaintiffs’ theory of aiding and abetting liability is incredibly broad the alleged causal chain between Twitter’s actions and the attack in Turkey is extremely attenuated. The Taamneh plaintiffs’ theory is that Twitter aided and abetted a 2017 terrorist attack in Turkey because it had general knowledge that ISIS used its platform for organizing and recruitment purposes and did not do enough to remove all ISIS content. The question Taamneh raises is whether platforms can be found liable for aiding and abetting terrorist acts under section 2333 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). Yet on the case’s free speech ramifications, the arguments in Taamneh were unsettlingly silent. These cases have generated intense interest among free speech litigators, civil rights groups, and scholars, in part because the stakes of a bad decision for digital free expression are high in either case. Google, could dramatically reshape the internet. For this reason, Taamneh, like its companion case Gonzalez v. This could incentivize platforms to take down vastly more speech - and not just terrorist speech - than they currently do, in order to avoid even the chance of liability. At issue is whether tech companies should bear liability for the use of their platforms by terrorist groups. Indeed, the word “speech” was not uttered a single time during oral argument in Taamneh, and the First Amendment came up only once, in passing.Īnd yet, Taamneh is a case with speech at its center. And yet, last Wednesday, in what could be an incredibly consequential case for freedom of speech online, members of the Court appeared to forget almost entirely about the existence of the First Amendment altogether. ![]() For decades now, the Court has been accused of weaponizing, or “Lochnerizing,” the First Amendment by extending free speech protections so far into so many areas of ordinary law that it has become something of an all-purpose deregulatory device. There was something conspicuously absent from the courtroom when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Twitter v. ![]()
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