April 2020] THE "WEAPONIZATION" OF FACEBOOK 827 and cannot be sent to jail, penalties for corporate criminal activity range from criminal fines, restraints, criminal sanctions, and reputational risk, to the most severe penalty, dissolution.104 The broad potential for criminal liability carries significant consequences for a variety of corporate behavior.105 The threat of criminal liability may incentivize corporations to perform internal investigations, cooperate with regulators, and actively pursue settlement for alleged misconduct.106 Therefore, in parsing out the standard for social media corporations, the process of holding corporations liable differs significantly from holding natural persons liable. Because social media companies are platforms for communication, human rights abuses on these platforms are once-removed from the company, meaning there is no direct link between the social media company and the human rights violation other than a third-party’s use of its platform. There would be virtually no circumstances under which a social media corporation could be found to have committed a human rights abuse under the standard adopted in Presbyterian Church of Sudan.107 Specific intent is likely an unworkable standard for social media corporations because the strict standard would virtually immunize them from any criminal liability. Instead, the “knowledge plus substantial act” standard may be more effective to weed out corporate actions that lead to violations of human rights abuses from actions committed in the ordinary course of business. A. THE MENS REA REQUIREMENT International tribunals have generally reaffirmed “knowledge” as the requirement to prove intent.108 In Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić, the ICTY defined intent as “awareness of the act of participation coupled with a conscious decision to participate by planning, instigating, ordering committing or otherwise aiding and abetting in the commission of a crime.”109 In Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, the ICTR relied on National Coal Board v. Gamble, an English case that involved corporate complicity of an employee of the National Coal Board. The court in National Coal Board defined intent under the theory of complicity as follows: [A]n indifference to the result of the crime does not itself negate abetting. If one man deliberately sells to another a gun to be used for murdering a third, he may be indifferent about whether the third lives or dies and interested only 104. Slye, supra note 65, at 970. 105. Sara Sun Beale, A Response to the Critics of Corporate Criminal Liability, 46 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 1481, 1481 (2009). 106. See id. 107. See Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc., 582 F.3d 244 (2d Cir. 2009). 108. See Cassel, supra note 68, at 323–24. 109. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić, Case No. ICTY 94-1-T, Appeal (Int’l Crim. Trib. for the Former Yugoslavia July 15, 1999).

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