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Twitter and
rebuffed subpoenas from families of the Sandy Hook school massacre victims, who were seeking internal company data to show how conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s false claims about the killings spread on social media, according to court documents and lawyers for the families.
The fight last year over access to the social-media platforms’ data played out largely behind the scenes of the legal battle to hold Mr. Jones liable for his claims. The families of the victims in the 2012 massacre, in which a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators inside a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, sued Mr. Jones and his companies, including the website Infowars, for defamation. Mr. Jones had claimed the shooting was an elaborate hoax.
The falsehood Mr. Jones helped to start spread for more than a decade, often via Facebook and Twitter, and led to intense harassment of victims’ survivors, they testified. Before he was booted off the platforms, social media also helped Mr. Jones earn huge amounts from doomsday preparation kits, virility pills and other products that he sold on his own online sites. Mr. Jones lost two civil lawsuits by default last year in Connecticut and Texas and was hit with judgments totaling $1.4 billion. Mr. Jones and his companies, including Infowars parent Free Speech Systems LLC, have filed for bankruptcy. He has signaled he will appeal in the defamation cases.
The headquarters for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, in Menlo Park, Calif.
Photo:
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
At the Connecticut trial, the families sought to use data from the social-media platforms to support their claim that he had spread the conspiracy theory because it boosted internet traffic and his online sales.
Twitter Inc. and Facebook’s parent,
Platforms Inc., fought subpoenas from a Connecticut court and ultimately avoided turning over the data the families were requesting, according to court filings, correspondence among lawyers and interviews with people involved in the case.
Facebook and Twitter’s lawyers initially said that federal law and company policy prevented them from turning over Mr. Jones’s and his companies’ user data. The families ended up going to trial without what they said was the best evidence that social media incubated the defamatory conspiracy theory at the heart of the case.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who represented Newtown in the U.S. House of Representatives when the massacre occurred, said social-media companies “pay lip service” to the notion of policing content.
“They will take down the worst actors here and there, but their bread is buttered by people like Alex Jones,” he said. “Alex Jones made them a lot of money.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), whose previous House district included Sandy Hook.
Photo:
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Mr. Murphy wants Congress to limit the immunity technology companies have for user content on their platforms, which the tech industry has opposed on grounds that it would stifle free expression.
Meta said that it responds to requests for user data “according to applicable law and our policies” and that it had responded to the families’ subpoena in good faith.
A Meta spokesman noted that the company had provided the plaintiffs with some subscriber information, and he said it had been prepared to provide more data, but the two sides never reached an agreement on terms to do so.
Twitter, which was bought by Elon Musk last year after the civil suit had concluded, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The company’s lawyers objected to the subpoena, saying among other things that the demand for data was overly broad and could have violated the Stored Communications Act, the same federal law Meta cited in refusing to turn over data without a user’s consent. Twitter’s outside lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer who represented families in the Connecticut lawsuit, disputed Meta’s assertions, saying that both platforms slow-walked negotiations to comply with the plaintiffs’ subpoena.
Lawyer Chris Mattei gave his opening statement in September at the trial over defamation damages from Alex Jones in Waterbury, Conn.
Photo:
H John Voorhees III/Press Pool
“The companies were acting in bad faith to prevent the disclosure of data that was central to our case, but that would have reflected extremely negatively on their own complicity in what was a 10-year campaign against these families,” he said.
The tech companies have taken some action. In 2018, Mr. Jones and his outlets were banned from Twitter, Facebook and
Alphabet Inc.’s
YouTube unit on grounds they violated usage policies. Those actions meant millions fewer views for Jones’ broadcasts and posts.
In one instance detailed in court records and at trial, Mr. Jones’s Infowars site published a false report nearly two years after the shooting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had recorded no killings in Newtown in the year of the massacre—evidence, the site claimed, the shooting was a hoax.
An accounting fragment presented as an exhibit at trial showed what material like that did for Mr. Jones’s business. Sales in Infowars’ online store skyrocketed from $48,000 to more than $232,000 the day after the false report.
Norm Pattis, a lawyer who represented Mr. Jones in the Connecticut defamation suit, said the defendants had supported the families’ efforts to get the social-media data—but for the opposite reason of the plaintiffs’ lawyers. The defendants believed it would show Mr. Jones wasn’t as responsible for the spread of the conspiracy theory as the families believed, he said.
Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, was killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre.
Photo:
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
“The social media companies’ refusal to participate contributed to the plaintiffs’ ability to make fantastical claims,” Mr. Pattis said. “There’s no competent evidence that Mr. Jones’s infrequent comments about Sandy Hook saturated the world, but that’s what the jury was led to believe.”
In court filings, Mr. Jones’s lawyers said he didn’t possess the social-media analytics data that the plaintiffs wanted. The defendants eventually turned over some internal records showing limited information that Mr. Jones’s companies received from the social-media platforms about how Infowars content was performing.
Lawyers for the families won permission from the Connecticut state court to subpoena the social-media companies directly for the data.
Facebook and Twitter initially rebuffed the requests, arguing that the federal Stored Communications Act precluded them from producing data without a user’s consent, among other objections, according to Mr. Mattei and correspondence reviewed by the Journal.
After the plaintiffs’ lawyers secured written consent from Mr. Jones’s lawyers, Mr. Mattei said, the social-media companies “moved the goal posts.” While Facebook provided some basic subscriber data showing the owners of accounts, it maintained it couldn’t isolate analytics specific to those the plaintiffs were seeking, such as for content related to mass-casualty events.
Facebook and the plaintiffs discussed terms under which the company would produce the data, according to Mr. Mattei and records from the case, reaching an impasse in late July 2022.
With the trial date approaching, Mr. Mattei and his colleagues used testimony from a third-party analyst as well as depositions from Mr. Jones’s employees to show that Mr. Jones and his company had paid close attention to which of his most-provocative claims went viral, and to use that content to direct customers to his online store, court records show.
Some family members of the Sandy Hook victims said they were frustrated by the refusal of Twitter and Facebook to more readily cooperate.
“They absolutely could have done more,” said Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, was the school’s principal and died in the shooting. “They just turned a blind eye to it because it was the easy thing to do.”
Immediately after the school massacre, Mr. Jones and Infowars began pushing the false story that the tragedy was a hoax.
Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the school massacre, speaks to the press in Waterbury, Conn., in October.
Photo:
MICHELLE MCLOUGHLIN/REUTERS
What followed for people like Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed, was a decadelong deluge of harassment and threats from Mr. Jones’s followers. Infowars viewers accused the families of being part of a government-affiliated “false flag” operation intended to provide the justification to seize firearms.
Since purchasing Twitter last year, Mr. Musk has taken steps to ease its content-moderation policy. He has tweeted, however, that he won’t let Mr. Jones return. “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame,” he said, citing the death of his own firstborn child.
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Mr. Parker said that as he waited to testify before a Congressional subcommittee in 2019 about the years of abuse he had suffered from Mr. Jones’s followers, a Twitter executive, Carlos Monje Jr., apologized on the company’s behalf.
“He’s like, ‘We didn’t do enough to help you and protect you at the time that you needed it,’” Mr. Parker said. “‘We learned from that, and we’re making the changes necessary to make sure other people don’t go through what you went through.’”
Mr. Monje left in 2020 and is now an undersecretary at the U.S. Transportation Department. “As a parent, I hope Robbie and the Sandy Hook families get the full justice they deserve,” he said.
Write to Ted Mann at Ted.Mann@wsj.com
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