Back in January, a widow sued Twitter claiming that the micro-blogging site was in breach of the United State’s Anti Terrorism Act due to it hosting ISIS propaganda. Yesterday, a San Francisco judge has dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that Twitter cannot be claimed liable for said propaganda.
According to The Guardian, District Judge William H Orrick sided with Twitter, stating that the company cannot be held liable because “it wasn’t the speaker of ISIS’s hateful rhetoric.” “As horrific as these deaths were… Twitter cannot be treated as a publisher of speaker of ISIS’s hateful rhetoric and is not liable under the facts alleged,” writes Judge Orrick. Key to this decision is the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that states that online content providers generally do not bear civil liability for content published by a third party.
With the case now dismissed, the plaintiffs can now opt to amend and refile the case if they wish to do so.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian