The Supreme Court seemed skeptical Wednesday of a lawsuit trying to hold social media companies responsible for a terrorist attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people.
During arguments at the high court several justices underscored that there was no evidence linking Twitter, Facebook and Google directly to the 2017 attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul. The family of a man killed in the attack says the companies aided and abetted the attack because they assisted in the growth of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack . A lower court let the lawsuit go forward.
The court’s disposition of Wednesday’s case and a related one it heard a day earlier is important, particularly because the companies have been shielded from liability on the internet, allowing them to grow into the giants they are today.
If the court bars the lawsuit involving the attack in Turkey from going forward it could avoid a major ruling on the companies' legal immunity. That outcome would leave the current system in place, but also leave open the possibility that the justices could take up the issue again in a later case.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett was among the members of the court who suggested that the suit against the companies lacks the kind of specificity required under a federal anti-terrorism law. Barrett said there would have to be specific allegations in the complaint, “not just general recruitment or radicalizing people.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, participating remotely for a second straight day because of illness, told a lawyer for the family that he was "struggling with how your complaint lines up with the three requirements of the statute” that the companies knowingly helped a person commit a terrorist act.
The law the case involves is the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which allows Americans injured by a terrorist attack abroad to sue for money damages in federal court. U.S. citizens who are family members of Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in the Reina nightclub attack, sued Twitter, Facebook and YouTube parent Google under the law.
Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama says his new Cabinet will include an artificial intelligence “minister” in charge of fighting corruption. The AI, named Diella, will oversee public funding projects and combat corruption in public tenders. Diella was launched earlier this year as a virtual assistant on the government's public service platform. Corruption has been a persistent issue in Albania since 1990. Rama's Socialist Party won a fourth consecutive term in May. It aims to deliver EU membership for Albania in five years, but the opposition Democratic Party remains skeptical.
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Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
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