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Op dinsdag 7 mei 2019 14:40 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:[..]
Tja, het is nou eenmaal geen overheidsdienst, dus ze mogen doen waar ze willen. Net als fok hier.
Dat constante slachtoffergehuil is trouwens werkelijk te triest voor woorden.
Mooi, dan mogen alle niet publieke organisaties moslims en wie dan ook als klant of werknemer weigeren. Of is het dan toch ineens discriminatie gebaseerd op ideologie?
Bovendien, heb je natuurlijk wederom ongelijk. Private bedrijven kunnen publieke functies uitvoeren, waar dan ook vrijheid van meningsuiting geldt.
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Can Facebook Censorship Be Limited by the Right to Free Speech?
As discussed, as a private company, Facebook has the right to decide what it can censor but can the application of free speech ever be applied to Facebook, even though they are not a government entity?
Possibly. After all, Facebook has become a public space where people now get their news and information about the world. Even private spaces can become public for purposes of free speech. The argument is based around a case called Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins. Several local high school students were removed from the shopping center for soliciting petition signatures. The Supreme Court ruled that the shopping center was a quasi-public space and that the shopping center could not use trespass laws to keep the students from exercising their peaceful free speech rights.
In another case, Marsh v. Alabama, (1946) the town of Chickasaw, Alabama had removed a Jehovah’s Witness named Grace Marsh for distributing religious literature. Chickasaw happened to be owned by Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation and argued that Marsh was trespassing on private property, so free speech didn’t apply. The Supreme Court disagreed saying that the company had taken over the role as the government for the town and so free speech applied. It was not private property.
Facebook in many ways is also a public space (although a virtual one) where people congregate to gain information and converse with friends and acquaintances. Some would argue that just like a shopping mall, people should be allowed to express themselves, as long as it is peaceful.
Whether the public space argument will prevail probably won’t be known for a while. An aggrieved person must first bring a lawsuit over being censored and then run it through the various court levels until it reaches the Supreme Court (if the case is accepted by the Court.).
One recent case did discuss this argument and it did not do very well. Chuck Johnson, a right-leaning activist, was removed from Twitter over a Tweet that apparently urged followers to support “taking out” a civil rights activist, the court opined on the potential that Twitter is a state actor for First Amendment purposes. Johnson used the “public space” argument saying “Twitter is the new company town, shifting the public sidewalks of cyberspace to its monopolized public square of the Twitter feed.” As such, he has the right to free speech and should have his account reinstated. The state court disagreed saying that Twitter is private sector company that it only needs to abide by the rules it laid out in its Terms of Service.
The court also noted that the Twitter has the “right to exercise independent editorial control over the content on its platform,” and terminating Johnson’s account for allegedly bad behavior “is an editorial decision regarding how to present content.” It further stated that Twitter’s “rules were adopted to ensure that [Twitter] is able to maintain control over its site and to protect the experience and safety of its users.” So this court was not willing to apply the Public Square argument to private sector companies, such as Twitter and Facebook.
On the other hand, last year in Packingham v. North Carolina, a case in which North Carolina sought to ban child predators from using social platforms, the Supreme Court struck down the North Carolina law, and referred to social platforms as the “modern public square.”
You can be sure that individuals on both sides of the political spectrum are sure to continue pursuing the idea that social media companies are the new public space and that free speech should apply. For now, though, Facebook censorship is alive and well. In fact, Facebook just this week, exercised its censorship rights by “purging 559 pages and 251 accounts that have demonstrated spammy behavior and violated its rules. Many of the accounts removed are from hyper-partisan political pages and accounts,” according to Axios. So, for now, Facebook has the right to decide what news 70% of the population receives. How long that will last remains to be seen.
https://alj.artrepreneur.com/facebook-censorship/