Today's Twitter v. Taamneh, Inc. involved (to oversimplify slightly) a lawsuit against Twitter based on Twitter's alleged role in helping ISIS by providing it publishing services, and by algorithmically recommending some of ISIS's videos. The lawsuit was brought under the federal Antiterrorism Act, but the Act applied fairly traditional aiding-and-abetting principles, borrowed from the criminal law and tort law. (The tort law and criminal law principles aren't always identical, but they seemed to be treated similarly in this case.)
No liability, the Court held, chiefly because Twitter (and others) merely provided an off-the-shelf service, which treated ISIS no better than any other user. Here's an excerpt, with the references to this arms-length treatment emphasized:
To start, recall the basic ways that defendants as a group allegedly helped ISIS. First, ISIS was active on defendants' social-media platforms, which are generally available to the internet-using public with little to no front-end screening by defendants. In other words, ISIS was able to upload content to the platforms and connect with third parties, just like everyone else.
Second, defendants' recommendation algorithms matched ISIS-related content to users most likely to be interested in that content—again, just like any other content. And, third, defendants allegedly knew that ISIS was uploading this content to such effect, but took insufficient steps to ensure that ISIS supporters and ISIS-related content were removed from their platforms. Notably, plaintiffs never allege that ISIS used defendants' platforms to plan or coordinate the Reina attack; in fact, they do not allege that Masharipov himself ever used Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.
None of those allegations suggest that defendants culpably "associate[d themselves] with" the Reina attack, "participate[d] in it as something that [they] wishe[d] to bring about," or sought "by [their] action to make it succeed." In part, that is because the only affirmative "conduct" defendants allegedly undertook was creating their platforms and setting up their algorithms to display content relevant to user inputs and user history. Plaintiffs never allege that, after defendants established their platforms, they gave ISIS any special treatment or words of encouragement.
