just curious, how would you guys feel if facebook allowed Nazis to openly operate on their platform? Would you want facebook to remove Nazi content?
A bit more nuanced than that when on one hand those you're comparing against nazis didn't commit any genocide, and on the other hand both parties are committing to violent acts.
Who those companies are going to side with is going to be pretty subjective. Although I don't know if the Israeli military is doing "propaganda" through social media.
Hamas literally has the genocide of all Jews in their charter and the leader of Hezbollah said he wants all the Jews in the world to come to Israel so that they can be wiped out all at once. It's not a bit more naunced.
If its actual Hamas and Hezbollah propaganda that they want removed, and not just some protesters or something then what is the problem?
The answer is to ban all parties from social media.
No.
Honestly, if they have no servers in Israel, what the fuck are they going to do about it?
At worst they could block them from the country.
They can, as the article clearly states, TAKE LAGAL ACTION against Twitter, as in sue them for being accomplices in incitement to murder, something that is illegal under Israeli law.
Just like, for example, EU countries can take legal actions against American owned social networks for violating EU laws and force them to pay huge fines.
I mean, if Facebook can be fined for violating privacy laws in Spain Twitter can sure as fuck be fined for violating incitement laws in Israel, right?
They could be fined because they had servers there.
You can't prosecute a company in your legal system if they dont physically operate in your country, that would be fucking idiotic.
There is legal precedent for Israeli courts to accept lawsuits against international companies if they have business operations in Israel (such as serving Israeli costumers) and/or are violating Israeli law.
Examples: one, two.
In any case, the Israeli government can also press charges against Twitter in the United States.
Most courts do indeed follow the rules of jurisdiction, yes. But very broadly speaking, companies with absolutely no physical presence in a country either aren't subject to the jurisdiction of that country or are judgement-proof within that country. Looking over Israel's long-arm statute, it seems very unlikely that Israeli courts would have the authority to exercise jurisdiction.
US courts operate under US law. Israelis have attempted several times to sue social media companies in the US under this theory. All have failed. Some recent examples:
Force v. Facebook, Inc., No. 16-CV-5158 (NGG) (LB), 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8478 (E.D.N.Y. Jan. 17, 2018)
Plaintiffs in the above-captioned action are the victims, estates, and family members of victims of terrorist attacks in Israel. (1st Am. Compl. ("FAC") (Dkt. 28).) They assert various claims against Facebook, Inc. ("Facebook") based on their contention that Facebook has supported the terrorist organization Hamas by allowing that group and its members and supporters to use Facebook's social media platform to further their aims.
Pennie v. Twitter, Inc., No. 17-cv-00230-JCS, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199250 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 4, 2017)
Plaintiffs seek to hold Defendants Twitter, Inc., Google Inc., and Facebook, Inc. liable for providing material support to Hamas, a Palestinian entity designated as a foreign terrorist organization, primarily in the form of access to Defendants' online social media platforms.
Cohen v. Facebook, Inc., 252 F. Supp. 3d 140 (E.D.N.Y. 2017)
Plaintiffs in the above-captioned related actions assert various claims against Facebook, Inc. ("Facebook") based on their contention that Facebook has supported terrorist organizations by allowing those groups and their members to use its social media platform to further their aims. The plaintiffs in the first action (the "Cohen Action") are roughly 20,000 Israeli citizens (the "Cohen Plaintiffs"). (Cohen Am. Compl. ("Cohen FAC") (Dkt. 17), No. 16-CV-4453.)
If we learned anything in the last three years, it’s that Facebook and Twitter need to stop existing in their current forms. They’re just too evil. We trusted these websites with our information and they sold it for top dollar. Terrorists can openly recruit with little problem, they just evade bans almost like how a few have done for these forums.
Forget about the social benefit, we need to stop using them en masse. But that will never happen.
Counterpoint.
PayPal operates in the Israeli market exactly the same way as other mega international corporations, such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, do. The Supreme Court has clarified that an international corporation that distributes its products to an Israeli customer must expect to be sued in Israel … [and] this precedent applies, even more so, when it involves a mega international corporation that distributes its products and services to tens and hundreds of thousands of customers in Israel. … The fact that the activity of these mega corporations is done primarily or exclusively via the Internet does not provide such corporations immunity from litigation in courts in Israel and according to Israeli law. …
Few problems with this:
The opinion was aimed quite clearly at the illegal forum selection clause.
Forum selection clauses are in contracts, and contracts can (with limited exception) only be enforced by parties to the contract.
Enforcing contracts is one of the limited triggers of Israel's long-arm statute.
"Facebook has terrorists!" is not enforcing any sort of contract.
A predatory forum selection clause would be illegal under US law as well, which would allow the plaintiffs to bring the judgement to be enforced in the US.
As I pointed out, "Facebook has terrorists!" is not illegal under US law, so an Israeli judgement on that point would likely not be enforceable in the US.
Of course just today they ripped a big hole in section 230.
As long as I could filter it out, I don't know that I would care.
But it's a moot point because they would remove it anyways because it's not advertiser friendly, and any tools that could be used to filter it could also be used to filter whatever algo-promotions they have going on in the background.
You understand why this is a bad thing, right?
Fair enough. My understanding is simply that:
The Supreme Court has already accepted the general notion that in some cases foreign companies can be sued in Israel if they serve and do business with Israelis (provide paid service, have Hebrew language pages and support, etc.), and-
There have been cases not specific to the predatory contract clause where the courts accepted lawsuits against foreign companies. I've found at least two cases where Israelis forced Google to pay reparations and change their search results. One being for the company Mishloha, although Google appears to have purged all mentions of the case in English from their search results.
But hey: not a lawyer. Not even an internet lawyer. I wouldn't know.
Anyway, reading a bit further into the news on Hebrew sites it appears the direction the Department of Justice is currently considering (or at least, one direction) is to pass a law which allows a quick procedure to taking down content that is defined as illegal by Israeli law or that the existence of which can pose a clear risk to people's lives. Since sites like Facebook and Twitter already remove content when provided with a court order this law would define a way to fast track requests to remove illegal content through the courts.
Most importantly it's also worth noting that just because the loudmouths in the government say they'll do something doesn't necessarily mean they'll actually follow up with an actual action, or that they'll follow through once they do.
No, it actually doesn't matter how it's applied. At all. If you do not have a presence in a country, you are literally not subject to its laws.
If a website violates your country's laws, it's entirely up to your country to block it if they don't want access.
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