Facebook, Twitter and Google sued by families of Pulse nightclub shooting victims

The families of three men killed inside an Orlando nightclub earlier this year by an Islamic State-inspired gunman accused the world’s largest social media companies in federal court this week of providing the terror group with material support.

Filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the 51-page complaint blames Facebook, Twitter and Google with giving the terror group also know as ISIS with platforms used to “spread extremist propaganda, raise funds and attract new recruits,” the likes of which the lawsuit credits with having caused Omar Mateen to open fire inside Orlando’s Pulse nightclub on June 12, killing dozens.

“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 lawsuit states.

Federal investigators say that Mateen, 29, pledged allegiance to ISIS in the midst of carrying out the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history. Although the FBI failed to find any direct connections between the gunman and international terrorism, however, the families of Mateen’s victims say the social media companies should be held responsible for the attack as they provided ISIS with money-making platforms used to amplify its agenda of terror.

The social media companies, according to the lawsuit, have for years “knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits.”

“This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out or cause to be carried out, numerous terrorist attacks, including the June 12, 2016, attack in Orlando where 53 were injured and 49 were killed,” the lawsuit alleges.

Specifically, the complaint accuses the social media companies of placing advertisements on the digital content shared online by individuals aligned with ISIS, including Facebook posts, tweets and YouTube videos, then lining the terrorists’ coffers with portions of the subsequent ad revenue.

“Although defendants have not created the posting, nor have they created the advertisement, defendants have created new unique content by choosing which advertisement to combine with the posting,” the lawsuit claims.

“By specifically targeting advertisements based on viewers and content, Defendants are no longer simply passing through the content of third parties. Defendants are themselves creating content because Defendants exercise control over what advertisement to match with an ISIS posting,” it continues.

In turn, according to the lawsuit, “money raised through the use of Defendants sites was used by ISIS to conduct terrorist operations including radicalizing Omar Mateen.”

Previous, similar attempts to take social media companies to court over their supposed ties to terrorism have proved unsuccessful largely due to protections provided under the Communications Decency Act (CDA), federal legislation that allows online publishers to avoid being held responsible for user-generated content.

In August, for example, U.S. District Judge William Orrick dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed against Twitter on behalf of a woman who blamed the company with inspiring a “lone wolf” terrorist to open fire a year earlier in Jordan, killing her American husband, because he said he the law protected Twitter from liability.

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

This week’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of the families of Tevin Crosby, Javier Jorge-Reyes and Juan Ramon Guerrero, three of the 53 Pulse patrons killed by Mateen prior to the gunman being killed in a police shootout.  

Facebook, Twitter and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted Monday evening, the New York Daily News reported.