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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Twitter isn’t legally liable for pro-ISIS propanda tweets that a lawsuit claimed contributed to the death of two Americans, a federal judge ruled.

The lawsuit was brought by a plaintiffs’ class-action law firm on behalf of the widows of two U.S. government defense contractors from Florida, Lloyd “Carl” Fields Jr. and James Damon Creach, who were killed in a shooting spree attack in Jordan last November. It alleges that ISIS was responsible for the attack and that Twitter helped contribute to the bloodshed by allowing the terrorist group to use the site to spread propaganda, attract new recruits, and raise money.

U.S. District Judge William H Orrick of San Francisco dismissed the lawsuit on Wednesday.

“As horrific as these deaths were … Twitter cannot be treated as a publisher or speaker of Isis’s hateful rhetoric and is not liable under the facts alleged,” Judge Orrick wrote.

He cited the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that says online content providers generally do not bear civil liability for content published by a third party. It’s the same law that protects Twitter if someone tweets something defamatory.

As Law Blog reported earlier, the complaint against Twitter mainly relied on two federal statutes. One (18 U.S.C. § 2333) passed in the early 1990s creates a private civil cause of action for victims of terrorism. The other (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) approved by Congress in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings makes it a crime to “knowingly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.”

Twitter has maintained that the suit has no merit.

“While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this family’s terrible loss…..Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear,” a Twitter spokesman said in January after the complaint was filed.

Twitter has said the company has teams around the world that actively investigate reports of rule violations, partner with organizations countering extremist content online, and work with law enforcement when appropriate.

*WSJ