If the widow of a U.S. government contractor killed in a 2015 Islamic State shooting in Amman, Jordan, wins her newly filed Anti-Terrorism Act suit against Twitter, there could be enormous consequences for social media sites.
As my colleague Jon Stempel reported Thursday, extremist groups are well known to use the Internet to recruit new members and plan attacks. Liability to victims of these attacks - and the treble damages available under the ATA - could mean significant exposure and reputational harm for sites frequented by extremists.
But first, plaintiff Tamara Fields will have to win judicial support for her theory that Twitter provided material support to the Islamic State by permitting the group to use the site to encourage small-scale attacks like the one that killed her husband, Lloyd "Carl" Fields
