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Page Number: 32

26 

TWITTER, INC. v. TAAMNEH 

Opinion of the Court 

fall short.  Plaintiffs do not claim that defendants intention-
ally associated themselves with ISIS’ operations or affirm-
atively  gave  aid  that  would  assist  each  of  ISIS’  terrorist 
acts.  Nor  have  they  alleged  that  defendants  and  ISIS
formed a near-common enterprise of the kind that could es-
tablish  such  broad  liability.  These  allegations  are  thus  a
far cry from the type of pervasive, systemic, and culpable 
assistance to a series of terrorist activities that could be de-
scribed as aiding and abetting each terrorist act.

To be sure, we cannot rule out the possibility that some 
set of allegations involving aid to a known terrorist group
would justify holding a secondary defendant liable for all of 
the group’s actions or perhaps some definable subset of ter-
rorist  acts.  There  may  be,  for  example,  situations  where
the provider of routine services does so in an unusual way
or provides such dangerous wares that selling those goods
to a terrorist group could constitute aiding and abetting a 
foreseeable  terror  attack.    Cf.  Direct  Sales  Co.  v.  United 
States,  319  U. S.  703,  707,  711–712,  714–715  (1943) 
(registered  morphine  distributor  could  be  liable  as  a  co- 
conspirator  of  an  illicit  operation  to  which  it  mailed  mor-
phine far in excess of normal amounts).  Or, if a platform 
consciously  and  selectively  chose  to  promote  content  pro-
vided  by  a  particular  terrorist  group,  perhaps  it  could  be
said to have culpably assisted the terrorist group.  Cf. Pas-
saic Daily News v. Blair, 63 N. J. 474, 487–488, 308 A. 2d 
649,  656  (1973)  (publishing  employment  advertisements
that discriminate on the basis of sex could aid and abet the 
discrimination).

In  those  cases,  the  defendants  would  arguably  have  of-
fered aid that is more direct, active, and substantial than 
what we review here; in such cases, plaintiffs might be able 
to establish liability with a lesser showing of scienter.  But 
we need not consider every iteration on this theme.  In this 
case, it is enough that there is no allegation that the plat-
forms here do more than transmit information by billions of