Online harassment and hate speech have long festered on Twitter, but the incidents appeared to have risen during the 2016 presidential campaign. Exchanges between supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton grew personal and acrimonious. Of course, over the last four years, Trump has used twitter as his personal means to attack opponents and to spew conspiracy theories such as claiming that the Democrats had stolen the presidential election. Twitter finally did the right thing and cut him off after the Capitol riot which he helped to instigate. Now, an interesting defemation case against Twitter has arisen in Canada — more specifically in British Columbia (B.C.).
B.C. billionaire Frank Giustra, a Vancouver businessman and philanthropist, has recently won the right to sue Twitter for defamation after a judge ruled that B.C. courts have jurisdiction to hear the case. Moreover, the case once again highlights the fact that there are jurisdictional difficulties with internet defamation cases. Under American law, Twitter would not be liable for damages to Giustra in the U.S. due to freedom of speech provisions in the First Amendment. However, in Canada the question becomes whether Canadian common law provides similar protections for a platform such as Twitter. The answer would have to be determined in Canadian courts, with a possibility of eventually ending up in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Remember the infamous “Pizzagate”. In the above case, tweets promoting a conspiracy theory had gone out during the 2016 U.S. presidential election that Hillary Clinton and other supporters were involved in child sex-trafficking. Among those supporters targeted was Frank Giustra who sits on the board of the Clinton Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by former U.S. president Bill Clinton. The related tweets also left the false impression that Mr. Giustra was corrupt, a “murderous thief” and a criminal. The whole crazy conspiracy was of course debunked.
There is nothing particularly new about Twitter being accused of allowing hate speech and disinformation to permeate its platform. What is especially interesting is that this self-made billionaire is financially capable of taking on an internet Goliath in the courts, with possibly a good chance of winning his defamation case under Canadian common law. Once again, people are hoping that this particular lawsuit will help raise public awareness of the real harm to society if social media platforms are not held responsible for the content posted and published on their sites. Although Twitter has yet to file a response to the defamation claims, the company has indicated it intends to defend the case mainly on the basis that it is not a publisher of the tweets. Unfortunately, the time normally taken to try such cases in the courts can be very lengthy, even taking several years for final judgement. In the meantime, it behooves us all to be aware of the real flaws and dangers associated with the misuse of social media, including those surrounding Twitter.
FROLITICKS 
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