Terrorism & social mediaJudge questions whether Facebook is doing enough to deter terrorists from using its platform

A federal judge harshly criticized Facebook, admonishing the social media giant for not be doing enough to deter terrorists from using its platform.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, New York, also accused Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Facebook’s lawyers — who had sent a first-year associate to a hearing — of not taking seriously lawsuits which touch on important issues such as international terrorism and the murder of innocents.

“I think it is outrageous, irresponsible, and insulting,” Garaufis told the attorney Thursday. The judge ordered the law firm to send a more senior lawyer to the next hearing on 28 September because he wanted to “talk to someone who talks to senior management at Facebook.”

The New York Daily News reports that Garaufis is overseeing two lawsuits in which more than 20,000 victims of terrorist attacks and their families charged Facebook with helping terrorist groups such as Hamas. The judge did note that similar suits have not been successful under U.S. law, which protects publishers from liability for the speech of others. He stressed, though, that this does not mean that Facebook should not take the suits seriously and address the issues the suits raise.

Is the social media platform not “basically putting together people who’d like to be involved in terrorism with people who are terrorists?” the judge asked. “Doesn’t Facebook have some moral obligation to help cabin the kinds of communications that appear on it?”

The judge continued. “Let’s put the law aside and talk about reality. The reality is that people are communicating through social media and the outcome of these inquiries, be it Google or Facebook, has the potential of hooking people up to do very dangerous, bad and harmful things in terms of international and domestic terror.”

Garaufis noted that federal judges have limited ability to address terrorism, and they do not usually get involved in such cases until someone is arrested and charged with a crime.

“Don’t you have a social responsibility as citizens of the world without having these plaintiffs come to me in Brooklyn?” he asked. “There are things you could do that don’t involve the courts or the judicial system.”

Facebook issued a statement saying the company is committed to making people feel safe using the social network.

“Our Community Standards make clear that there is no place on Facebook for groups that engage in terrorist activity or for content that expresses support for such activity, and we take swift action to remove this content when it’s reported to us,” the company said in a statement. “We sympathize with the victims of these horrible crimes.”

Insurance Journal notes that families of victims of 2015 terrorist attacks in France and Jordan have filed two lawsuits against social media companies in California, where they claim Twitter, Facebook, and Google have played crucial roles in the “explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years.” Both cases point to federal statute which allows victims of terror attacks to seek damages from parties which provide communications facilities that lend support to attackers.

“Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook’s online social media network platform and communication services,” a press release issued by the plaintiffs in July said. “Hamas has used and relied on Facebook’s online social network platform and communications services as among its most important tools to facilitate and carry out its terrorist activity.”

New York-based civil rights lawyer Robert Tolchin and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, filed the suit.

“Our aim in filing these law suits is to force Facebook to proactively monitor and remove in real time all materials that incite to terror,” said Micah Avni, the son of 76-year-old Richard Lakin who was killed in an October 2015 shooting and stabbing attack. “I wrote to Mark Zuckerberg ten months ago and tried to appeal to his conscience. Unfortunately, Mark lacks the moral fiber that real leaders are made of. Rather than taking a proactive and responsible approach, he has chosen to hide behind vague corporate policies. In doing so, he has allowed Facebook to become the world’s number one facilitator of terror.”

A judge ruled that U.S law protects Twitter from being treated as a publisher of any information provided by another content provider. The victim — the widow of an American murdered by an ISIS sympathizer in Amman, Jordan — amended the complaint and refiled it.

The cases are Force v. Facebook, 16-cv-5158, andCohen v. Facebook, 16-cv-4453, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).