Facebook vs French Freedom of Speech

Back in March, a French citizen filed suit in the French courts alleging that Facebook's censorship of his placement of nude art on his FB page constituted a violation of his free speech rights. The court agreed to consider the case.

Quoting from the article: "At the end of the day, this is about the fact that the public square, where freedom of speech used to be enforced, has moved in under the terms-and-services umbrella of a private corporation, where they enforce their own arbitrary limits of what may be expressed and not. That means our fundamental rights have effectively moved into the hands of private interests. I welcome a challenge to this doctrine and an enforcement of freedom of speech, once a public discussion forum – like Facebook – has grown large enough to be a de-facto public location, if not the de-facto public location."

Certainly I would love to see Facebook go down in flames on this one but I don't give it strong odds of prevailing, as Facebook's argument will surely be 'if you don't wish to abide by our rules, you don't have to use Facebook'. To which the appropriate response would be that Facebook constitutes a de-facto monopoly and should thus be subject to certain instances of public regulation. I'll be looking forward to how this turns out.

You can see the entire article here: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/03/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship/

4 thoughts on “Facebook vs French Freedom of Speech”

    • @Theo – That may be true fpr many, but around my parts nearly everyone that I talk with is appalled at FB's policies and privacy killing policies. Problem is that it IS the 600 pound gorilla in the room so you have to interact with it. I do so at the minimum level necessary.

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