The Supreme Court has reportedly rejected a lawsuit alleging that social media giant Facebook provided “material support” to terrorists by hosting their content on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform.
The Verge reports that the Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit brought against Facebook which claims that the social media platform provided “material support” to terrorists by hosting their content. The court declined to hear Force v. Facebook which was brought by the families of five Americans who were hurt or killed by Palestinian attacks in Israel.
The 2016 lawsuit claimed that Facebook knowingly hosted Facebook accounts belonging to the terrorist organization Hamas. The complaint contended that Facebook’s algorithm promoted terrorist content to people who liked similar pages or posts and as a result should not be protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which generally protects websites from being used for user-created content.
The Second Circuit appeals court disagreed and the complaint was shut down in 2019, with the court stating that there was “no basis” for making Facebook liable for arranging content on its platform using algorithms. The court stated that Facebook’s recommendation system was not unique to the site and displaying content to users based on their preferences “has been a fundamental result of publishing third‐party content on the Internet since its beginning.”
The Supreme Court did not release a statement on why the case was rejected but let the previous ruling stand. Force v. Facebook was one of many cases brought against social media platforms for allowing the spread of terrorism-related content, nearly all of these cases have been unsuccessful.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com