Two anti-government extremists were accused of shooting and killing federal officer Pat Underwood and his sister Angela sued Facebook as responsible as well.
Angela Underwood Jacobs filed a lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, alleging that the platform’s recommendation algorithms led the alleged killers to extremist content, suggested that joined the same group and given them the opportunity to coordinate their deadly actions online.
The lawsuit challenges a controversial law of 000 years that protects social media companies from liability for user posts.
Speaking exclusively with CBS Morning co-anchor Tony Dokoupil, Underwood Jacobs said his brother Pat would still be alive, if it wasn’t for Facebook.
“ They didn’t necessarily pull the trigger, but what they did was they had the power that could have stopped all of this and they sat on it,” said Underwood Jacobs. “I feel like they are responsible.”
According to the criminal complaint, Robert Justus Jr. and Steven Carrillo contacted each other on Facebook and discussed plans for a social justice protest in Oakland, California , around the death of George Floyd as a cover for an anti-government attack.
The couple met in person after coordinating in a Facebook group and went to a federal courthouse guarded by Underwood at the time, according to the criminal complaint.
Facebook Sued For Its Role In Federal Agent’s Death. Angela Underwood Jacobs alleges Facebook provided a platform for two men, Steven Carrillo & Robert Alvin Justus, Jr., who hatched a plot to attack a fed courthouse in Oakland, CA. Carrillo fired & killed the guard her brother.
— SCW (@SCWOFTX) January 7, 2022
Justus allegedly drove a white van and stopped in front of the courtroom, while Carrillo opened fire, killing Underwood and wounding another officer.
Carrillo was charged with murder and attempted murder and Justus was charged with aiding and abetting murder. Both men have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to stand trial next year.
In a wrongful death lawsuit filed earlier this month, Underwood Jacobs alleges that Justus and Carrillo, who lived more than 50 miles apart, “they had never met in person.”
The lawsuit alleges that the paths of the two “had no reason to cross”, until a Facebook group brought them together.
The lawsuit claims that Facebook recommended Justus “join groups dedicated to promoting the Boogaloo movement.”
The Boogaloo movement is a far-right extremist network calling for a second Civil War and promotes anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric.
In 2020, as social justice protests around the death of George Floyd raged across the country, members of the Boogaloo movement turned out every to the protests and often tried to capitalize on the conditions to create chaos and incite violence.
On the morning of 26 May 2020, the day before Pat Underwood was killed, Carrillo wrote in a Facebook group: “Now it’s on our coast, it must be nationwide. It’s a great opportunity to target the special soup bois. Let’s keep this energy going.”
The message was followed by two fire emojis and a link to a YouTube video showing a large crowd violently attacking police cars, according to the criminal complaint.
The FBI says that “sopa bois” is a reference used by members of the movement Boogaloo to talk about the federal agencies in charge of enforcing the law that are colloquially known as “alphabet soup” agencies.
Minutes after Carrillo’s publication in the Facebook group calling members to attack federal law enforcement officers, Justus commented, “Let’s dance.”
The next day, Carrillo posted again on the Facebook group, telling members members to “think outside the box” and “use” the “anger” of the protesters in downtown Oakland “to fuel our fire”.
Wrote “we have crowds of angry people to use for our benefit,” according to the criminal complaint.
Justus later told the FBI that he and Carrillo agreed to meet in person that day and travel together to the ongoing protests. held in Oakland.
Underwood Jacobs told CBS News that his brother would be alive “if Facebook had acted on information they had privately, that no one else had,” adding, “they chose not to give the information to the authorities”.
“But they didn’t use the word ‘kill’. There was a coded language,” Dokoupil told his lawyer, Ted Leopold.
“They know, through their actions of uniting these extremist groups, that bad things are going to happen,” he replied. Leopold. “And they know through their own algorithms that there are keywords that these groups use.”
Meta often indicates that it has 40,000 employees who work on security issues and who spent $5 billion dollars to address security issues at 2021.
The company recently said that in the run-up to the 2020 elections it expanded policies to weed out militia groups and prevent them from get organized. on the platform.
In June 2020, a month after Underwood’s murder, Meta banned the Boogaloo movement and designated the group as a dangerous US-based anti-government network
At the time, the social network said it had regularly removed Boogaloo content when it identified a clear call to violence. The company said it also limited the distribution of pages and groups that referenced the movement by removing them from the recommendations users saw.
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