<p>A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit families of Pulse victims filed against several social media companies alleging they didn&#8217;t do enough to stop <a type="internal">ISIS</a> propaganda that radicalized gunman Omar Mateen.</p> 
<p>The order to dismiss the lawsuit was filed Friday, the same day <a type="internal">a jury of 12 acquitted Mateen&#8217;s widow Noor Salman</a>, who was charged with aiding and abetting a foreign terror organization and obstruction of justice.</p> 
<p>Family members of nine victims and four survivors of the nightclub shooting sued <a type="internal">Twitter</a>, Facebook and Google on December 19, 2016, claiming that the online platforms &#8220;aided and abetted&#8221; and &#8220;conspired&#8221; with the Islamic State, an international terrorist organization, to commit the June 12, 2016 attack.</p> 
<p>The lawsuit alleged that the companies knew &#8220;that ISIS members and its official news outlets use numerous accounts&#8221; on the social media platforms to &#8220;publish the organization&#8217;s messages and to recruit and &#8216;radicalize&#8217; persons such as Mateen.&#8221;</p> 
<p>They argued that because Mateen was able to access videos of beheadings and other &#8220;jihadist material&#8221; through their platforms, they contributed to his &#8220;self-radicalization.&#8221;</p> 
<p>But the Michigan court ruled that the Orlando shooting was not directly committed by ISIS, nor did the companies do anything to support Mateen.</p> 
<p>U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson wrote in his dismissal that there is no definitive evidence suggesting that the material Mateen saw online directly led to the attack, &#8220;other than that the principles espoused in them motivated Mateen to carry out the dreadful act.&#8221;</p> 
<p>&#8220;The only conduct involved with the attacks that is described with any particularity is Mateen&#8217;s,&#8221; Lawson wrote, which suggests that he planned and conducted the shooting &#8220;in isolation, when he &#8216;self-radicalized&#8217; by perusing Internet postings, and then acted on his self-informed radical sentiments.&#8221;</p> 
<p>During the Salman trial in Orlando, prosecutors released Mateen&#8217;s web activity in the weeks leading up to the attack, including Google and Twitter searches related to ISIS, terrorism, and FBI surveillance.</p> 
<p>bpadro@orlandosentinel.com or 407-232-0202 or follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/BiancaJoanie" type="external">@BiancaJoanie</a></p>
Pulse families' lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook and Google dismissed