British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites.

The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive material or sexual content posted online even after they were notified.

“Seems extraordinary that Google is considering censoring its content to get into China but won’t cooperate with UK, US … in removing child abuse content,” Hunt said on Twitter. “They used to be so proud of being values-driven.”

Alphabet’s Google plans a search engine in China that will block some search terms and websites, two sources told Reuters earlier this month, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

Google said in a statement they agreed with Hunt that child sexual abuse was “abhorrent and must be removed, that’s why we co-operate with governments to fight child sexual abuse online”.

Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand invited major technology companies to attend a meeting on tackling child abuse and extremism on their websites, but the firms declined to attend, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

Google said they did offer to send an executive to the conference.

In January, Prime Minister Theresa May used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to say investors should use their financial power to force internet firms into taking more responsibility for stopping militants and paedophiles using their platforms.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged Google not to bow to censorship demands in China because by doing so, they allege, the company would be complicit in the repression of freedom of speech.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept website said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, code-named “Dragonfly”, has been under way since the spring of 2017, the news website said.

Social media, including Facebook, must proactively block content inciting hatred and prevent online campaigns which target minorities, such as those undertaken in Myanmar, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was speaking after U.N. experts accused Myanmar generals of “genocidal intent” and said Facebook had allowed its platform to be used to incite violence against Rohingya.

Facebook said on Monday it was removing several Myanmar military officials from the social media website and an Instagram account to prevent the spread of “hate and misinformation” after reviewing the content.

Zeid, whose spokesman said he has met with major tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Facebook and Google, in recent months, was speaking to a news conference before his four-year term ends on Aug. 31.

Zeid said he didn’t feel Facebook took the issue seriously at first but that the company’s attitude began to change after Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told a Geneva press conference in March that Facebook was being used in the country to spread hate speech.

“But it shouldn’t be because the press or the human rights community highlights the problem for them then suddenly to respond. They should be aware of it ahead of time,” he said.

“So I don’t think they should wait until the crisis begins. They should be thinking proactively about what steps they will take to mitigate that,” he added.

Facebook said on Monday that while it was too slow to act in the case of Myanmar, it was now making progress, with better technology to identify hate speech and improved reporting tools.

However, Zeid said there was a danger that social media could be over-regulated in a way that breaches human rights law including the right to freedom of expression.

Tech giants should “keep the broadest space available and open to the exercise of freedom of expression”, relying on international human rights law for regulation, he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Google’s search engine of promoting negative news articles and hiding “fair media” coverage of him, vowing to address the situation without providing evidence or giving details of action he might take.

Trump’s attack against the Alphabet Inc. unit follows a string of grievances against technology companies, including Twitter Inc and Facebook, which he has accused of silencing conservative voices.

Europe’s new data privacy law has put a small army of tech firms that track people online in jeopardy and is strengthening the hand of giants such as Google and Facebook in the $200 billion global digital advertising industry.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/justice-and-fundamental-rights/data-protection/2018-reform-eu-data-protection-rules_en) brought in by the European Union in May is designed to protect personal information in the age of the internet and requires websites to seek consent to use personal data, among other measures.

The ability to track internet users has attracted hundreds of companies that harvest and crunch user data from websites – with or without the consent of the site owner – to form very specific individual consumer profiles.

GDPR poses a challenge to those groups because they all need consent to use the data. While sites often request consent on behalf of the ad tech firms they use directly, uncertainty over whether every link in the supply chain is GDPR-compliant is pushing some to leave Europe altogether.

Concerns about GDPR should, however, benefit Alphabet’s Google and Facebook as their loyal customers are more likely to give consent to carry on using sites, allowing the U.S. giants to keep amassing and analysing vast amounts of GDPR-compliant data that advertisers will pay to use.

Big publishers such as national newspapers are also likely to keep their readers and believe they can benefit by eventually charging advertisers more for online slots in the knowledge they are compliant with the new EU rules.

“It’s challenging for the digital ecosystem,” said Mark Read, joint boss at the world’s biggest ad agency, WPP.

“But if consumers feel confident that their data is being protected and they understand how it is being used and it’s done with permission, ultimately that should be a good thing for clients and for us,” he told Reuters.

TANGLED WEB

From a standing start nearly 30 years ago, the internet has become the largest advertising medium in the world because it allows firms to target consumers with ads based on anything from their browsing history, comments, spending power to location.

Within the tangled ecosystem are multiple firms that help brands and ad agencies connect to sites that fund content with targeted ads. For every dollar spent by an advertiser, about half may go to ad tech groups, according to industry estimates.

When an internet user pulls up a page multiple bid requests are sent into the advertising ecosystem touting facts about the person such as demographics and interests, as well as the nature of the site they are viewing.

That personal data can then pass through a dozen or more ad tech firms before a company or ad agency bids at an auction for space on the website and an advert is loaded. It is that spread of personal data that risks breaking the new EU privacy law.

For example, a firm that provides ads for a website viewed on a mobile phone may use other partners not included in the compliance chain to provide information about a user’s location.

That doubt about compliance is threatening the myriad ad tech middlemen and is also prompting advertisers and publishers to rethink how they share their user data.

“In a world where we are putting the consumer first, there are only going to be so many opportunities for the very colourful ecosystem of companies to obtain consent,” said Andrew Casale, head of ad group Index Exchange (http://www.indexexchange.com).

UNCERTAIN TIMES

In the midst of the disruption, some ad tech groups are pulling out of Europe. Harry Kargman, founder of mobile ad firm Kargo (https://www.kargo.com), told Reuters the company had withdrawn for now because it did not know how GDPR would be applied.

“There is too much uncertainty,” he said. “And I don’t think (that will change) until they apply it in specific cases.”

Verve (https://www.verve.com), a company that helps advertisers target consumers on mobiles based on location, and Drawbridge (https://www.drawbridge.com), a cross-device user data firm, have both stopped operating ad businesses in Europe.

Factual (https://www.factual.com), another company that provides consumer data based on their location, also temporarily scaled back its operations in Europe after realizing the mobile apps it relies on “could not safely claim they were compliant”.

Others groups higher up the food chain have also been hit.

France’s Publicis, one of the world’s top five advertising companies, said it had felt the effect.

“Advertisers were cautious about spending money in supply chains that they weren’t absolutely sure they could target safely or legally,” said Steve King, CEO of Publicis Media.

Kargo’s Kargman expects Facebook and Google to benefit from the uncertainty. The two companies are likely to receive a high ratio of user consent given their loyal customer base while both own high-quality data because users post likes, dislikes and location, or search for areas of interest on Google or YouTube.

The companies also have deep pockets so can ensure they are compliant, throwing engineers and lawyers at the problem and reassuring brands at a time of uncertainty.

But they too have had to make changes.

Facebook lost about 1 million European monthly active users after GDPR and it said a desire by some users to avoid targeted ads is likely to lead to a modest revenue hit.

In response to GDPR, it has asked advertisers to certify they have the proper consent to use any data from third-party brokers, potentially shedding itself of some liability.

Google is also requiring publishers to secure consent when using its ad products on their properties. Marketers and partners also need to now use more of Google’s own services.

It has stopped providing easy access to lists that helped companies evaluate the success of their ads by showing which users clicked on them. Advertisers must now use Google’s Ads Data Hub application to measure the effectiveness of campaigns.

Google declined to comment for this article. It has previously said GDPR is a big change and is working with partners on compliance.

GOOD NEWS FOR PUBLISHERS?

Of the more than 20 executives spoken to by Reuters, from ad bosses to publishers, tech groups, brands, lawyers and consultants, all expect the supply chain to thin out – leaving publishers to potentially receive a greater slice of ad revenue.

“Given the number of actors it could take some time though,” said Phil Smith, head of UK advertiser trade body ISBA (https://www.isba.org.uk).

Leading British sports website GiveMeSport (https://www.givemesport.com) is one publisher hoping the biggest overhaul of data privacy laws in more than 20 years will challenge the system.

“There are too many middlemen and they’ve been eating the cake,” General Manager Ryan Skeggs said. “We’re hoping GDPR will help weed them out. The sites that do well, theoretically speaking, should then make more money.”

Three of the leading UK newspaper groups – Rupert Murdoch’s News UK (https://www.news.co.uk), The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com) and The Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk) have joined forces in the Ozone Project to sell their online inventory, or ad space, together, offering advertisers access to 39 million users.

Project leader Damon Reeve said publishers had lost control of their data to tech vendors. By compiling only quality inventory, he hopes marketers and publishers will start sharing user data directly – making them less reliant on third parties.

That should provide a boost to the newspaper industry which is still grappling with the shift online, where ad rates are far lower than those charged for a space in a physical edition.

“By 2020, Ozone could add circa 30 million pounds ($38 million) per annum – not a trivial contribution to a national newspaper newsroom,” said analysts at consultancy Enders Analysis (https://www.endersanalysis.com).

Adam Smith, a director at WPP’s media buying arm GroupM (https://www.groupm.com), agreed the focus on user compliance was likely to cut the amount of available inventory. “That feeds into price inflation for the sought after inventory,” he said.

How long the initial impact of GDPR will last, though, is not yet clear as many consumers – tired of the constant permission pop ups – are just giving consent to access sites. Prosecutors are also yet to bring any cases for data breaches.

But GDPR has ramped up the speed of change in what has been such a fragmented industry. “This kind of consolidation is natural in most maturing industries,” Enders analyst Matti Littunen said. “GDPR has just accelerated it.”

Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc. collectively removed hundreds of accounts tied to an alleged Iranian propaganda operation on Tuesday, while Facebook took down a second campaign it said was linked to Russia.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the accounts identified on his company’s platform were part of two separate campaigns, the first from Iran with some ties to state-owned media, the second linked to sources which Washington has previously named as Russian military intelligence services.

Officials in Iran, where it is a holiday to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival, were not immediately available to comment. Moscow has repeatedly denied using hacking or fake social media accounts to influence foreign elections. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move by Facebook and others is the latest attempt by global social media giants to guard against political interference on their platforms. It comes as concerns are rising about foreign attempts to disrupt the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The United States earlier this year indicted 13 Russians for alleged attempts to meddle in U.S. politics, but the latest alleged Iranian activity, exposed by cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. suggests the problem may be more widespread.

“It really shows it’s not just Russia that engages in this type of activity,” Lee Foster, an information operations analyst with FireEye, told Reuters.

FireEye said the Iranian campaign used a network of fake news websites and fraudulent social media personas spread across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube, to push narratives in line with Tehran’s interests.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

The activity was aimed at users in the United States, Britain, Latin America and Middle East up through this month, FireEye said, and included “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes” as well as advocacy of policies favorable to Iran such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal.

FireEye said the Iranian activity did not appear “dedicated” to influencing the upcoming election, though some of the posts aimed at U.S. users did adopt “left-leaning identities” and took stances against President Donald Trump.

That activity “could suggest a more active attempt to influence domestic U.S. political discourse” is forthcoming, Foster said, but “we just haven’t seen that yet.”

‘DISTINCT CAMPAIGNS’

Facebook said the Russia-linked accounts it removed were engaged in “inauthentic behavior” related to politics in Syria and Ukraine. It said that activity did not appear to be linked to the Iranian campaign.

“These were distinct campaigns and we have not identified any link or coordination between them. However, they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook last month removed 32 pages and accounts tied to another misinformation campaign without describing its origins, but which U.S. lawmakers said likely had Russian involvement.

Microsoft said this week that hackers linked to the Russian government sought to steal email login credentials from U.S. politicians and think tanks, allegations the Russian foreign ministry described as a “witch-hunt.”

FireEye said the U.S.-focused Iranian activity ramped up last year, just months after Trump took office, with websites and social media accounts posting memes and articles, some of which were apparently copied from legitimate U.S. and Iranian news outlets.

In some cases, the domains for the fake websites like “US Journal” and “Liberty Free Press” were originally registered years before the 2016 election, in 2014 and 2013, but most remained inactive until last year, FireEye said.

Arabic-language, Middle East-focused websites appear to be part of the same campaign, the company added.

The technology companies variously said they linked the accounts to Iran based on user phone numbers, email addresses, website registration records and the timing of account activity matching Iranian business hours.

FireEye expressed “moderate confidence” about the Iranian origins, but said it has not been able to tie the accounts back to a specific organization or individuals.

Hundreds of thousands of people followed one or more of the Facebook pages implicated in the campaign, Facebook said.

It shared examples of removed posts, including a cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier executing a Palestinian and a fake movie poster showing President Trump embracing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Postings cited by FireEye expressed praise for U.S. politicians and other Twitter users who criticized the Trump administration’s decision in May to abandon the Iranian nuclear pact, under which Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear weapons program in exchange for loosening of sanctions.

Some Twitter and Facebook accounts were designed to appear as if they were real people in the U.S., Britain and Canada, according to FireEye. The accounts used a combination of different hashtags to engage in U.S. culture, including “#lockhimup,” “#impeachtrump” and “notmypresident.”

Twitter, which called the effort “coordinated manipulation,” said it removed 284 accounts.

Facebook said it removed 254 pages and 392 accounts across its flagship platform as well as its Instagram service. Some of the accounts had events and groups associated with them.

The accounts spent about $12,000 to advertise through Facebook and Instagram using a variety of currencies, Facebook said. The company said it had notified the U.S. Treasury and State departments of the purchases, which may potentially violate sanctions.

Alphabet, which includes Google and YouTube, did not respond to a request to comment.

Google has added a section to its twice-yearly transparency report to show who buys U.S. election ads on its platform and how much money is spent on political advertising, the search engine giant said on Wednesday.

The move follows similar steps from Twitter and Facebook in late June, as social media platforms face the threat of U.S. regulation over the lack of disclosure on such spending.

The new data from Alphabet Inc gives details on advertisers who have spent more than $500 on political ads from May 31, 2018.

With a spend of $629,500, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a fundraising organization for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, stood as the top U.S. political ad spender, according to the data.

Google said it would update the report every week and the public can view new ads that get uploaded or new advertisers that decide to run ads.

Apple Inc. said on Wednesday that an app belonging to popular conspiracy theorist Alex Jones remains in the company’s mobile App Store because it has not been found to be in violation of any content policies.

The Infowars Official app has become the App Store’s third most-downloaded news app this week after Apple removed access on Sunday to some of Jones’ podcasts from its digital store. Apple had said the podcasts violated the company’s rules against hate speech.

The company had not explained why the app remained available until issuing a statement on Wednesday.

“We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store, as long as the apps are respectful to users with differing opinions, and follow our clear guidelines, ensuring the App Store is a safe marketplace for all,” Apple told Reuters in a statement.

Jones’ podcasts differed from the Infowars app in a key way. The podcast app allowed access to an extensive list of previous episodes, subjecting all of those past episodes to Apple’s content rules.

The Infowars app contains only rebroadcasts of the current day’s episodes, subjecting a much smaller set of content to the rules. Apple said it regularly monitors all apps for content violations.

“We continue to monitor apps for violations of our guidelines and if we find content that violates our guidelines and is harmful to users we will remove those apps from the store as we have done previously,” Apple said.

Google parent Alphabet Inc, Facebook Inc and Spotify Technology SA also removed some content this week that had been produced by Jones. Google has not said why the Infowars app, which offers live streams and articles, was not removed in its app store as part of the actions.

Twitter has drawn public outcry for not removing Jones’ account. The company is responding by expediting a review of its content policies, according to an internal email that Chief Executive Jack Dorsey shared on Twitter on Wednesday.

The message noted that Twitter would have taken action against Jones had he posted the same content on its service as he had on Facebook and YouTube.

Users who publish content freely available on the Internet should get consent from the person behind it, Europe’s top court ruled on Tuesday in a boost to the bloc’s creative industries.

Regulators say they lose out because illegal uploads of works on big online platforms such as Google’s YouTube and Vivendi’s video-sharing site Dailymotion deny publishers, broadcasters and artists of revenues.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruling came after a secondary school student in Germany downloaded a photograph of Cordoba from a travel website to illustrate a presentation which was then published on the school website.

Photographer Dirk Renckhoff then sued the city of Waltrop and North Rhine-Westphalia for copyright infringement and 400 euros in damages. A German court then sought guidance from the Luxembourg-based ECJ, which went against a non-binding opinion from its adviser four months ago.

“The posting on a website of a photograph that was freely accessible on another website with the consent of the author requires a new authorisation by that author,” judges said.

“By posting on the internet, the photograph is made available to a new public,” they said.

Judges said posting a work online was different from hyperlinks which lead users to another website and thus contribute to the smooth functioning of the internet.

“Subject to the exceptions and limitations laid down exhaustively in that directive, any use of a work by a third party without such prior consent must be regarded as infringing the copyright of that work,” the court said, referring to EU copyright legislation.

The ruling could result in a rash of litigation as artists assert their rights, said Nils Rauer, a partner at Frankfurt-based Hogan Lovells.

“The idea is that we as a society should appreciate and protect copyrighted works. The overall intention of the Commission, European Parliament and the court is to create respect for copyright,” he added.

]]> 7651 https://www.faith-matters.org/google-plans-censored-version-of-search-engine-in-china/ Thu, 02 Aug 2018 09:11:04 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7565

Google plans to launch a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites and search terms, two sources said, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

The plan comes even as China has stepped up scrutiny into business dealings involving U.S. tech firms including Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. amid intensifying trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

The Intercept earlier reported Google’s China plans on Wednesday, citing internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.

The project is code named “Dragonfly” and has been underway since the spring of 2017, the news website said.

Progress on the project picked up after a December meeting between Google’s Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, it added.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The finalised version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials, it added.

Chinese state-owned Securities Times, however, said reports of the return of Google’s search engine to China were not true, citing information from “relevant departments”.

But a Google employee familiar with the censored version of the search engine confirmed to Reuters that the project was alive and genuine.

On an internal message board, the employee wrote: “In my opinion, it is just as bad as the leak article mentions.”

The worker, who declined to be named, said that he had seen slides on the effort and that many executives at the vice president level were aware of it. He said he had transferred out of his unit to avoid being involved.

Separately, a Chinese official with knowledge of the plans said that Google has been in contact with authorities at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) about a modified search programme.

The official, who declined to be named, said the project does not currently have approval from authorities and that it is “very unlikely” such a project would be made available this year.

Google declined to comment on the accounts and the CAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters on Thursday.

A day earlier, the search giant also declined to comment on specifics mentioned in The Intercept report, but noted that it has launched a number of mobile apps in China and works with local developers as part of maintaining its domestic presence.

But the report pummelled shares of U.S.-listed Baidu which dominates China’s search engine market. Baidu shares fell 7.7 percent on Wednesday, despite posting better than expected quarterly results.

Google’s main search platform is blocked in China along with its video platform YouTube, but it has been attempting to make new inroads into China.

In January, the search engine joined an investment in Chinese live-stream mobile game platform Chushou, and earlier this month, launched an artificial intelligence (AI) game on Tencent Holdings Ltd’s social media app WeChat.

Reports of its possible re-entry spurred a strong reaction on Chinese social media outlets on Wednesday evening, including debates over the merits of a censored search engine versus accessing the U.S. version through illegal virtual private networks.

“Let’s carry on jumping the Firewall,” said one anonymous poster. “I’d rather not have it than use a castrated version.”

Britain and France will join forces to press companies to do more to tackle online extremism, Prime Minister Theresa May will say on Tuesday, her first foreign trip since her Conservative Party lost its majority in a parliamentary election.

After winning support from the Conservatives to stay on as prime minister after Thursday’s election, May heads to France, wanting to repair her authority and possibly to bask in the popularity of Emmanuel Macron, who last month swept to victory in a presidential contest.

May will also want to raise Britain’s talks to leave the European Union, which have been put in doubt since her governing Conservative Party suffered the setback in the election and now needs to strike a deal with a small Northern Irish party.

But her spokesman said the two leaders will focus on counter-terrorism, and return to May’s election campaign pledge to tackle online extremism following two attacks in as many weeks in Manchester and London that killed 30 people.

“The counter-terrorism cooperation between British and French intelligence agencies is already strong, but President Macron and I agree that more should be done to tackle the terrorist threat online,” May will say, according to her office.

She will add that the measures to “encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility” could include “creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable content”.

It was not clear how much further their talks would build on  discussions at a meeting of the G7 most industrialised nations last month, where the leaders agreed to do more to purge extremist content.

Internet firms, such as Google and Twitter, say they are investing heavily and employing thousands of people to take down hate speech and violent content on their platforms, with evidence their efforts are working.

But the companies say they also struggle to identify replacement accounts that quickly reappear.

After two Islamist attacks in less than two weeks, May’s bid  to clamp down on internet extremism has struck a chord with international leaders especially Macron, whose country has suffered several jihadist attacks since 2015.

“(At the G7) they had a very good conversation on how they could work together in order to make social media companies do more to address the fact their platforms are used to spread extremism,” May’s spokesman said.

“I would expect that conversation to continue tomorrow.”

Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the tech giants permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

The plaintiffs assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

“For years defendants have 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,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

“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 plaintiffs say.

A spokeswoman for Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook and Google could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Farook, the 28-year-old, U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the most recent lawsuit.

U.S. federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by David Ingram and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler)