Less than a week after a judge dismissed a similar lawsuit in Michigan, a lawyer representing 16 Pulse survivors filed another lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube’s parent company Google in Orlando Wednesday.
The suit, filed Wednesday in Orlando’s federal courthouse, argues the social media companies are responsible for letting the Islamic State group use their platforms to spread its propaganda. That propaganda lead Omar Mateen to conduct his attack on the Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, killing 49 people, the lawsuit claims.
“The expansion and success of ISIS is in large part due to its use of the defendants’ social media platforms to promote and carry out its terrorist activities,” wrote Ari Kresch and Keith Altman, the Michigan attorneys who filed the lawsuit. “…But for ISIS’s postings using defendants’ social media platforms, Mateen would not have engaged in his Orlando attack.”