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A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the families of three people killed in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack, alleging that online giants Google, Facebook and Twitter are promoting the siege by hosting and creating content from Islamic State have supported and favored.
Radicalized Muslims Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and wounded 22 others during a holiday party and training event organized by the San Bernardino County Division of Environmental Health at the Inland Regional Center on December 2, 2015.
Gregory Clayborn, Vanessa Nguyen and Jacob and James Thalasinos sued on behalf of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos, who all died in the attack.
“For years, the defendants have knowingly and ruthlessly made accounts available to the terrorist group ISIS in order to use their social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and recruiting new recruits,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants are information content providers because they create unique content by combining ISIS postings with advertising in a way that is specifically targeted to the viewer. The defendants share the income with the ISIS for its content and benefit from the ISIS postings through advertising income. “
But a three-judge panel at the 9th District Court of Appeals in San Francisco disagreed. The ruling, passed on June 22, also dealt with lawsuits holding Google responsible for the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris, which killed in 2017, and Google, Twitter and Facebook for the attack on Reina nightclub in Istanbul which killed 38 people in 2017.
The judges ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects websites from liability for material that is posted on the website by someone else.
“Since the Clayborn plausors did not plausibly allege that ISIS committed, planned or authorized the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, they have not made an appropriate claim to aiding and abetting an international terrorist act,” wrote Judge Morgan Christen.
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