The U.S. Supreme Court handed social media companies a major victory Thursday in the first test case involving the immunity from lawsuits granted to internet platforms for the content they publish online.
In two separate cases, one against Twitter, the other against Google, the families of people killed in terrorist bombing attacks in Istanbul and Paris sued Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube, claiming that the companies had violated the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, which specifically allows civil damage claims for aiding and abetting terrorism.
The families alleged that the companies did more than passively provide platforms for communication. Rather, they contended that by recommending ISIS videos to those who might be interested, the internet platforms were seeking to get more viewers and increase their ad revenue, even though they knew that ISIS was using their services as a recruitment tool.
