San Francisco, California. Recent moves by Facebook to hire 3000 people to look for “fake news” are not exactly just to hunt for news, as much as they are to prevent incidents that may cause legal liability as a new court suit shows in the USA
American families of three victims from a 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California have launched a lawsuit against tech giants Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Legal action demanding compensation, has been filed in California, claiming that the three companies have permitted ISIS to develop an online presence, and provided space for the militant group to spread their beliefs through social media worldwide.
The survivors of those killed say that ISIS propaganda was the main motive to the terrorists in the San Bernardino attack by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik. The final death toll was 14 people killed, and 22 more seriously injured when Farook and Malik targeted a California Department of Public Health training event in December of 2015.
“Even if Farook and Malik had never been directly in contact with ISIS, the use of social media directly influenced their actions on the day of the San Bernardino massacre,” the filed lawsuit states.
Keith Altman, one of the attorneys representing the families, said that ISIS and other terrorist organisations “rely upon social media in order to recruit and in order to conduct terrorist operations.It is not really in dispute that this is what takes place.”
Google and others, tend to hide behind the Communications Decency Act, which state that companies operating social media platforms are not liable for content posted online by their users.
In recent years, since the emergence of the Islamic State group, critics have called on tech giants, and in particular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, to establish better measures to prevent the propagation of terrorist content on their websites.
Facebook recently announced that it is set to hire 3,000 people around the world to monitor video content and posts uploaded to the popular website for violent or criminal acts.