The father of a victim of the Islamic State’s deadly attacks on Paris last year is suing Facebook, Google and Twitter for aiding the terrorist group.
“For years, defendants have knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use their social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” reads the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Northern California.
“This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out numerous terrorist attacks, including the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris.”
Reynaldo Gonzalez brought the suit on behalf of his daughter, Nohemi Gonzalez, who was among the 130 people who were killed.
“Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the 30-page suit alleges.
The legal document provides several examples of the Islamic State using the social media platforms to recruit adherents, solicit money, launch propaganda campaigns and portray their gruesome acts.
The lawsuit claims that all of the named portals benefit financially because the companies run paid ads along with the terrorists’ content. It singles out YouTube, which is owned by Google, for sharing ad revenue generated by the Islamic State’s graphic snuff videos with the Sunni-led terrorist network.
“Not only does defendant Google profit from ISIS, it shares some of those revenues with ISIS. In order for ads to appear associated with a posting on a YouTube video, the poster must … register the account for monetization,” the complaint reads.
Documented accounts of ads appearing on Islamic State-posted videos “means that Google specifically approved the video for monetization; Google earned revenue from each view of [the example] video; and Google shared the revenue with ISIS.”
The lawsuit is akin to one filed in January by another Paris victim’s family member, which Twitter moved to dismiss in March on the grounds that it’s not responsible for users’ actions.
“YouTube has a strong track record of taking swift action against terrorist content,” a Google spokesman told the International Business Times when asked to comment on the Gonzalez lawsuit. “We have clear policies prohibiting terrorist recruitment and content intending to incite violence and quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users.”
Less than 48 hours before Omar Mateen slaughtered 49 people in Orlando, Fla., Brett McGurk, President Obama’s special envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition, reported that the government has made significant progress in stunting The Islamic State’s social media presence.
“Their media propaganda is not what it was before — they had kind of [an] open season back in 2014,” McGurk told White House reporters on Friday.
“We’ve worked very closely throughout the global coalition to make sure that we get this stuff off Twitter, off Facebook, off YouTube. We work very closely with Facebook and Twitter. Twitter has taken down about [125,000] pro-ISIL handles. For every one on Twitter now, there’s about six counter-ISIL handles.”
But some experts still fault the platforms for not doing all they can.
“Social networks have long stressed they will help legitimate investigations of crimes and attacks, but have resisted efforts to police or censor the vast amounts of content flowing through them,” Counter Extremism Project CEO Mark Wallace said on Thursday. “But social media groups are capable of doing more to prevent and remove horrific content from being streamed worldwide.”
Twitter also defended itself to the International Business Times.
“Twitter strongly condemns the ongoing acts of violence for which ISIS claims credit,” a spokesman told the paper. “We have teams around the world actively investigating reports of rule violations, identifying violating conduct and working with law enforcement entities when appropriate. We believe this lawsuit is without merit.”
A Facebook representative echoed Twitter’s.
“This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves,” the spokesman told the paper.
