Shurat Hadin (Israel Law Center), an Israeli non-profit organization dedicated to fighting terrorism using the law, filed a class action yesterday in the Supreme Court of New York against Facebook. In the lawsuit, in the name of 20,000 Israelis, Shurat Hadin demands that Facebook should remove posts in which Palestinians incite to the murder of Israelis, and block new posts of this nature. The statement of claim stresses that Facebook has not responded to repeated requests to delete the posts. Shurat Hadin is not demanding monetary damages.
A Facebook spokesperson said yesterday that the action had no basis. A company statement published on the Fox News website says, "“We want people to feel safe when using Facebook. There is no place for content encouraging violence, direct threats, terrorism or hate speech on Facebook. As a community of nearly 1.5 billion people, we have a set of Community Standards to help people understand what is allowed on Facebook, and we urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate and take swift action.”
According to the lawsuit, posts by Palestinians on Facebook have inspired many of the knife attacks on Israelis in the recent weeks.
An investigation by Associated Press published at the end of last week found that social media, mainly Facebook and Twitter, were the number one source of news for young Palestinians. According to the report, some 3.7 million Palestinians follow news network Kuds, apparently connected to Islamic Jihad, while 4.2 million follow Shihab, apparently connected to Hamas.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 27, 2015
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2015