Feb 6, 2025 Story by: Editor
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit against Meta, in which a woman alleged that Facebook’s algorithm played a role in the radicalization of Dylann Roof, who carried out a racially motivated mass shooting at a Charleston church.
On Tuesday, February 4, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed all findings from a federal court in South Carolina, which had previously dismissed the case. The plaintiff, whose father was among the nine victims killed in the 2015 attack, argued that Facebook’s algorithm prioritized divisive and extremist content for Roof to increase user engagement. According to the lawsuit, these recommendations led him to join extremist groups.
The lawsuit, filed in 2022 by the plaintiff and her mother, accused Facebook of negligence and civil rights conspiracy. However, in 2023, the case was dismissed, with the district court ruling that Meta is shielded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 federal law that grants legal protection to online platforms from liability for user-generated content. The appeals court upheld this decision.
On June 17, 2015, Roof opened fire inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, shooting 10 people and killing nine, including state senator Clementa Pinckney. His child later filed the lawsuit against Meta.
Before the attack, Roof had published a racist manifesto. He was convicted on 33 federal charges and 13 state charges. In 2017, a federal court sentenced him to death. He remains one of three inmates on federal death row after President Joe Biden commuted nearly all federal death sentences to life imprisonment in December 2024. Source: WCNC
