Good. Better still would be to simply shut Facebook down, globally and permanently.
13
The problem is that common sense ( for the purposes of argument assume that there is such a thing ) doesn’t scale.
Up until recently in the so-called real world geographical distance meant something and time meant something.
A half dozen middle schoolers trying to construct the most universally offensive joke possible in someone’s garage in Nebraska probably wouldn’t set off riots in Jakarta 30 years ago, but now it might. It probably wouldn’t torpedo their career 30 years later either.
7
How does the EU court apply a ruling to an American multinational corporation on behalf of every country in the world? These countries do not share our First Amendment values. Brexit for the US anyone?
10
"Facebook sharply criticized the ruling. “This judgment raises critical questions around freedom of expression and the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and removing speech that might be illegal in any particular country,” the company said in a statement."
Facebook, and other social media are major contributors to the disintegration of societies across the globe. They have refused to monitor in a timely fashion and take down hideous content that encourages copycat actions and feeds the beasts of white supremacy, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. Why should these social media platforms be allowed to foster, spread and profit from this vile behavior without being checked? Their reach and impact is global and instant. It has new and dangerous consequences for us all. Hate speech should not be free speech.
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@Penner While I understand why you feel this way, you have to remember that you choose to be on the internet and reading things. You also have to remember that the point of freedom of speech is to speak your mind including the parts that sound hateful. In addition, it is up to you to determine whether a statement is true because anybody can say anything on the internet. I agree that hate speech is awful no matter which direction it is aimed, but it's speech nonetheless and cannot be regulated.
8
Zuckerberg and Facebook have put to bed the idea it's a "instrument for social change and good". It's all about the money and the money is our personal data. it's become a free for all of lies, trolls and hatred. I'd delete everything they had on me in a minute if I could.
10
We'll see how Europe likes it when China makes speech laws governing them. Or is digital colonialism just for Europeans?
32
Without defamation law enforced and a lifting, a removal of the 230 exemptions in the U.S. there is no free speech. We need libel law and we need defamation law at the federal and state level and we need to get rid of the 230 exemptions. Google and Facebook defame with untrue material public officials and private ones all the time. This is not legal. Shut them down.
4
@interesting understand that hate speech is an awful ting, but it is speech and we are allowed to speak our mind. No matter what, we cannot and should not be able to regulate what someone says and it is our own duty to determine what is true or not.
5
A just decision.
Zuckerberg has become an unprincipled coder, and Facebook the unwitting instrument of trolls and propagandists.
Shut it down.
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@Vox
Facebook is a tool. Much like a hammer it can be used to harm, but it can also be used to make good things. Just because there are trolls and propagandists doesn't mean it's bad, because there are millions of communities that are innocent of all this.
1
For a company that has skirted (or subverted) the law since its inception and who generates $62B in annual revenue I have zero emoathy that it is now going to be more difficult for them to line their pockets off the backs of their users/products.
FB a bastion of free speech and defender of expression - thats a laugh. They need to be broken up and severely regulated. If they went out of business tomorrow it would have zero negative effect on society. They don’t produce anything. They simply publish, non curated content and then mine it for purposes of greed.
They’re just ahead of oppressive regimes when it comes to their credibility in talking about freedom of speech. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are well mannered sociopaths leading a band of aspiring criminals trying to find ways to surreptitiously do illegal and immoral things.
6
Facebook arguing about freedom of speech is like rats saying they have a right to cheese access, but will protect it. C'mon people, they SELL your content. Its past time asking them to police themselves; just listen to the baloney Yuckerberg fed the US Congress, they have no intention of cleaning up. This is one more reason to support the EU.
7
I can only imagine the outrage here if people couldn't call Trump a fascist here, whether you think the statement fits or not.
I may not always agree with Facebook's practices on privacy, but we do have to make sure to draw a clear line where criticism can exist and what constitutes as harassment. I think this might be an overreach on this ruling.
25
"Self-regulatory" doesn't belong in a sentence where Facebook is a subject or implied subject actor.
4
I would much rather the US pass a law forcing Facebook to take responsibility - and potential liability - for the content on their platform. This would be much more productive than breaking up the company, in my opinion.
They would be, essentially forced to eliminate anonymous speech and extreme content. They would also be forced to adopt and adhere to a minimalist set of "decent" behavioral standards for content.
Of course, this would be a nightmare - complex, difficult and expensive. And, there would be undeniable collateral damage regarding types of discussions that wouldn't be allowed on the site anymore.
However, Facebook has expansive resources, now devoted primarily to mining and monetizing your personal information without regard to any sense of decency. They can afford the alternative.
As to the collateral damage: it is like worrying about taking out some of the healthy tissue around a clearly metastatic and life-threatening tumor. The public life of our society is threatened, we can worry about the margins when we have a better chance at survival.
6
I am reminded of the old say "one freedom ends where some one else freedom begins".
Freedom of speech in not a free pass for slander, hate mongering,
harassment and fake news.
I am looking forward to the day when social networks will finally operate within the law, perhaps warren is right, Facebook should be broken down.
17
@Gianni - I have never visited Facebook. However, any laws that forbids an individual to criticize a political leader is frightening to me!
13
Facebook has a very real defamation problem. Anyone who has ever had comments from Secret Facebook Groups hurt them knows this. This isn't about free speech when relating to statements about individuals, it is about an individual's right to defend their good name.
19
Maybe monitoring the internet will become a new source for job growth.
3
For all those readers who champion the EU's censoring criticism of politicians, just think how that will work if applied to the US. Criticism and satire of Trump could be prohibited by this logic, just as the comments against a German political leader!
17
@Donna Gray You are confusing proper criticism with
abuse.
A public figure should be criticized, instead think of what censorship would do to trump endless hate mongering.
7
@Gianni - But who decides "proper criticism with abuse"? Facebook? A government appointed monitor? Who?
6
Facebook should answer this by shutting down all access in the EU. That would take them out of the Court's jurisdiction. Let us see how long the politicians can withstand the outcry when the voters can't see their cat pictures.
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@michaelscody I wish they did and in so doing loose half of their business, EU has nearly a billion residents vs 300 millions USA.
Here is a better suggestion: why doesn't facebook stop stealing users private information and pictures and then sell it without user consent...
4
I feel like this article has left out important details. Can a court in an EU nation order Facebook to globally take down a post made by a non-EU citizen, posted outside of the EU? What about a post from an EU citizen posted while in a non-EU nation?
This detail is critical and missing.
10
@Ethan Solomita Did you read the article?
The EU court did just that, it said an individual country can order Facebook to take down posts and restrict access worldwide, so yes and yes.
9
You’re burying the lead. For FB Content = $$$$. Thats all they care about.
2
Of course Facebook is pretending to be a supporter of free speech.
Because, it's harder to make the case that you have a right to unlimited profit.
Facebook is nothing but a surveillance-for-profit corporation.
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@jrw There is nothing wrong w profit. The issue is that they obtain theres illegally, through intellectual property theft and copyright violations and violations of libel and defamation law, with libelous and defamatory stolen, content and intellectual property of other companies. There is no legitimate business model to Facebook and Google news. This is the problem. Making money doing legal things is not illegal.
4
Time to break apart Facebook. The damage it is responsible for far outweighs any benefits to society.
26
"The politician, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek ... argued that Facebook needed to delete the material in the country and limit worldwide access."
So essentially, when stripped of the legal niceties, a politician gets to decide that a post is "disparaging" and that "equivalent" posts as well shall be deleted, not just in the affected country but across the globe.
What a dangerous idea and hubris. We all know, looking no farther than our own shores, that "disparaging" can be as simple as "you dare to disagree with me". One politician immediately comes to mind, but he would not be unique under this standard, one that will already be found comfortably in the hands of places like China, North Korea or Russia.
We should have none of this, period.
20
@George S Look if the misogyny spewed about her is untrue, she has the right to have it taken down and to sue Facebook into extinction under defamation and libel law that are the foundation of free speech and free societies. She is a public official and if they are publishing untrue, libelous stuff about there that is illegal and they should be terminated as a company allowed to operate over this. They can and should be sued for libel and defamation Facebook and Google into oblivion. If the misogyny is untrue it is libelous about a public figure ... that they don't really understand or accept this ideally will be their demise. And what about private figures who are regularly defamed on Google and Facebook and their governments have to beg to have things about them taken down... this is not legal in a free society
2
Thank god somebody has the courage to force Facebook to act responsibly.
Facebook taking the high road of free speech is pretty rich when you consider that the controversies that have dogged them include publication of beheadings, teen suicide, hate speech, and literally mountains and mountains of election-manipulating falsehoods and outright propaganda.
Meanwhile, legitimate and professional newspapers, TV and radio are insulted daily by Trump and the Fox disinformation machine.
I have no sympathies for Facebook, who knowingly aided and abetted the stealing of the 2016 election and gave us the dumpster fire in the Oval Office.
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@Bohemian Sarah- I have never visited Facebook. However, any laws that forbids an individual from criticizing a political leader is frightening to me!
6
Great news, and also a reminder that the scale of the EU or US is needed to have an impact on multinationals. The lawlessness of Internet businesses has done big damage like Trump and Brexit (Cambridge Analytica) but also ruined lives of individuals, powerless to get lies, libel, revenge porn, ... removed.
14
So. Can courts in Russia, Iran, Cuba, China, North Korea, or wherever order the New York Times to take down, worldwide, stories that these countries consider defamatory? That's the logical extension of the EU ruling.
In times gone by, the legal sovereignty of countries was limited to their own borders or their own citizens.
But this has changed. The US has passed many laws that extend the reach of our courts beyond our borders. American citizens can file lawsuits against foreign countries they believe support terrorism. Swiss banks can be required to report on accounts on American citizens. Some of these laws are reasonable, others not so.
We need to remember: what goes around comes around. It is time to consider how far one nation's laws may extend to another country's shores.
In the specific case at hand, the determination of the European Court is very worrisome, and the US should consider whether or not to allow its enforcement on data repositories based in the United States.
17
In this case, it’s not really a problem.
Facebook should not be doing business in countries whose courts cannot be trusted.
The Judges on the European Court of Justice are smart and not partisan, this verdict was thought through.
5
@Alex We should remember that the US is quite happy extending its laws overseas. Quick example: you can be sanctioned for trading with Iran, even if you're not a US business.
It's not good law, but the EU is hardly the first to take this approach.
4
Good. Long overdue.
Facebook et al, has turned the World upside down and forced all to live in an environment akin to high school, where bullies roam the halls with impunity and insulting and juvenile and vicious behavior rules the day.
15
There ARE limits to free speech. It may be tricky, but consider the damaging consequences already experienced by democracies around the world.
You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre...Should you be able to “yell” incendiary speech around the country-or globe??
9
@Babs The other extreme, where China demands its citizens use an app to praise China, and earn 'points' for doing so, is the restriction we have to watch out for also. Hate speech is one thing. Military action that includes drone killings and incursions also needs those afflicted to be able to respond, and if they look for support from the rest of us, would any inflammatory emphasis be tolerated? What happens if it looks like disloyalty to support a minority nation?
1
@Babs "incendiary speech" just means saying something that you find distasteful or offensive. And one person's "incendiary speech" is another person's legitimate opinion.
Free speech means we have tolerate speech which we don't like it speech that we find offensive, insulting or rude.
Unfortunately Europe lacks the full concept of free speech that the US thankfully has. It is rather horrific that the EU restricts speech in an increasing number if ways. It needs to stop.
9
Okay!
Another reason to stand by the E.U.
Apparently, they gave higher standards than we do...
5
Hmmm, newspapers and other responsible media outlets pay experienced, knowledgeable professionals to curate their content so that illegal and untrue information is not disseminated, despite the loss of advertising revenue to Google and Facebook.
Google and Facebook, however, are free to publish whatever anyone puts on their platforms, with no proportional oversight of the veracity or legality of the content, and they are racking in billions of dollars.
What's wrong with this picture?
40
@Nancy
"Google and Facebook, however, are free to publish whatever anyone puts on their platforms"
Except they're not publishing anything in the sense you're implying. There's no editorial board for Facebook or Google that vets every single post or video or article because is not and was never their business. They're not "publishing" the way NYT publishes or any media company publishes. The publishers are the individual users who use the site. They are the ones editorializing, authoring, and then deciding to post their thoughts and opinions.
Social media grew out of blogs, which were self-published journals, editorials, diaries, and articles, often hosted by some other site. Nobody is up in arms demanding that Wordpress be held accountable for every random blog they host, yet it is the exact same thing that Facebook does. It's just organized differently, with the emphasis being on the user and their relationships and interactions rather than on the individual posts.
At the end of the day Facebook is just a company, not a utility or a government service. Nobody is entitled to Facebook, and nobody is obligated to use it. I don't use Facebook, I never have, I've long despised it, so it's otherworldly to me that I have to defend them now from unreasonable people who apparently don't know the difference between publishing and hosting information.
11
@Joel And just the like the comments that you can post on this platform and countless others, it is curated by professionals. FB and Google should not be allowed to rake in billions of dollars without commitment to similar standards. It's unfortunate that you label as unreasonable anyone who feels FB and Google, as companies, are not paragons or standard-bearers of free speech. Media outlets have standards and laws, so should platforms like Google and FB, and any others you wish to name. Perhaps what's really unreasonable is the perpetuation that Google and FB are simply hosting, not publishing, platforms.
8