[jkaplowitz]

I have only read the article and not the text of the legal complaint, but according to the article, he is specifically not basing his complaint on them being a victim of espionage and is making more specific allegations:

> "While Twitter may wish to play the victim of state-sponsored espionage, Twitter's conduct in punishing the victims of this intrigue, including Mr. Al-Ahmed, tells a far different story: one of ratification, complicity, and/or adoption tailored to appease a neigh beneficial owner and preserve access to a key market, the KSA," Randy Kleinman, the attorney for Al-Ahmed, wrote in the complaint.

I have no idea if their allegations are correct, but the argument you're dismissing is explicitly not what they're saying.

[thaumasiotes]

The allegation you quote is not an espionage allegation. It's saying that because this activist's Twitter account received unfavorable treatment from Twitter, we should assume that the unfavorable treatment of his account is evidence that Twitter is an arm of the Saudi government, and therefore the separate incident involving espionage must have happened with Twitter's cooperation or at least without Twitter's objection.

Note that the quoted allegation does not even allege any misconduct on Twitter's part! The only purpose is to ask you to draw an adverse inference about what Twitter was thinking when they became the victim of espionage.

[jkaplowitz]

I didn't say it was an espionage allegation. It's quite possibly not. The quote alleges complicity among other terms. I don't know if that's legally a type of misconduct - my guess is that the legal terms for both are more precise and this is just the press release version. But in everyday parlance, calling someone complicit does suggest some active form of inappropriate knowing participation in something bad. Not necessarily in espionage specifically.

[thaumasiotes]

> But in everyday parlance, calling someone complicit does suggest some active form of inappropriate knowing participation in something bad.

Let's say this guy's Twitter account was shut down because Mohammed bin Salman personally called Jack Dorsey and asked for a favor. That would be complicity, in shutting down the Twitter account. It would not be complicity in espionage.

[jkaplowitz]

Agreed. Nothing you are saying is contradicting anything I am saying, nor anything in the quote we're discussing.

I'm not sure why you're spending so much time to emphasize that the quote in the article doesn't allege espionage by Twitter when nobody is claiming it does, but indeed we are in full agreement that it doesn't. (Having not read the legal complaint itself, I express no opinion on what that alleges.)

[thaumasiotes]

You used that quote to support that claim that he is not basing his complaint on Twitter being a victim of espionage.

That claim is incorrect. Your quote does not state a cause of action against Twitter. Its only purpose, in the lawsuit, is to support, through innuendo, the claim that Twitter was complicit in an espionage "attack" against themselves. The complaint is based only on the espionage incident.

The quote is mostly irrelevant, which is the type of support you'd expect this complaint to be able to muster.

That's what I'm saying.

[jkaplowitz]

You're misunderstanding the quote, from what another HN commenter said (in a way that makes sense to me). Whether it includes everything necessary to state a cause of action or is at all legally critical to the complaint is not a relevant consideration when lawyers are talking to the court of public opinion rather than to the court of law, as in this quite.

The espionage is something Twitter was unaware of, as was the status of the spies at Twitter. Nobody is saying that Twitter committed espionage. But if they knew that the employees were doing or enabling something severely shady (without knowing specifics) in a way that they should have investigated or mitigated more than they did, but chose not to investigate or mitigate for an inappropriate reason like wanting good commercial outcomes from Saudi Arabia, they're choosing to be negligent in stopping the thing from happening. This is easily described in a press statement as complicity in something, even if they didn't know the something is espionage. In other words they negligently facilitated a bad thing that to their surprise turned out to be espionage.

So if I understand how this quote fits into the allegations: according to the plaintiff, the plaintiff was a victim of the espionage by the spies and not by Twitter, but Twitter's negligence enabled the espionage and they should have known something wrong was facilitated by their choices, therefore Twitter indirectly contributed to the espionage against plaintiff without having committed espionage themselves. Since Twitter made the situation worse and met the bar of negligence regardless of knowing that the specifics involved espionage, they allegedly should be liable. (I am not citing laws here because, again, I have not read the complaint and don't know the specific relevant laws.)

So, yes, it's based on the espionage incident, and yes Twitter was probably a victim of the espionage as well. But the plaintiff's argument doesn't depend on Twitter's status as victim of the espionage.

I've already stayed up far later than I should tonight to reply to lots of rapid-fire text from you, so this is my last one for now and hopefully for this subthread at all. Good night and be well.