EFF to European Court: No Intermediary Liability for Social Media Users:
Courts and legislatures around the globe are hotly debating to what degree online intermediaries—the chain of entities that facilitate or support speech on the internet—are liable for the content they help publish. One thing they should not be doing is holding social media users legally responsible for comments posted by others to their social media feeds, EFF and Media Defence told the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
Before the court is the case Sanchez v. France, in which a politician argued that his right to freedom of expression was violated when he was subjected to a criminal fine for not promptly deleting hateful comments posted on the "wall" of his Facebook account by others. The ECtHR's Chamber, a judicial body that hears most of its cases, found there was no violation of freedom of expression, extending its rules for online intermediaries to social media users. The politician is seeking review of this decision by ECtHR's Grand Chamber, which only hears its most serious cases.
EFF and Media Defence, in an amicus brief submitted to the Grand Chamber, asked it to revisit the Chamber's expansive interpretation of how intermediary liability rules should apply to social media users. Imposing liability on them for third-party content will discourage social media users, especially journalists, human rights defenders, civil society actors, and political figures, from using social media platforms, as they are often targeted by governments seeking to suppress speech. Subjecting these users to liability would make them vulnerable to coordinated attacks on their sites and pages meant to trigger liability and removal of speech, we told the court.
Further, ECtHR's current case law does not support and should not apply to social media users who act as intermediaries, we said. The ECtHR laid out its intermediary liability rules in Delfi A.S. v. Estonia, which concerned the failure of a commercial news media organization to monitor and promptly delete "clearly unlawful" comments online. The ECtHR rules consider whether the third-party commenters can be identified, and whether they have any control over their comments once they submit them.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @02:52AM (1 child)
"You know you're evil. (pause) You know you're evil."
"You know the niggers are overrunning....."
"They're laughing at us."
"Who is righteous the white or the nigger?"
"YOU GOT YOUR NIGGER CATTLE! YOU GOT YOUR NIGGER CATTLE! GO GO GO!"
----- "KING" TERRY A. DAVIS, RIP
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @03:13AM
Poor apk, the smallest snowflake around, no wonder you melt down so easily.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @03:34AM
I AM THE DERANGED MONKEY COCK YOUR DAD WARNED YOU ABOUT
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Friday April 29 2022, @06:45AM (2 children)
The weird part is who the fine is being levied against. The defendant is a politician who didn't delete someone else's problematic post from their Facebook wall fast enough.
I could see the person who posted it being fined for making the comment, or maybe Facebook since they're the one hosting it, but this seems out of line. This is like giving a fine to someone who wrote a journal entry on here because someone else left a nasty message that didn't get deleted as quickly as some French bureaucrat wanted.
I think the EFF's got a point. If this stands, you can troll a politician's Facebook page and suddenly THEY are the ones liable for it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday April 29 2022, @01:53PM
Yeah, that seems way stupid.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @04:10PM
Not just politicians, and not just Facebook. By this standard you'd be liable for trolls replying to a post you made on 4chan. It's nuts.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @04:10PM
this is silly.
the electric providing company is in cohouts too. no posting without electricity. and the fiber cable makers. and the ip-2-domain servicd provider and the domain and then the "supposed" owner of the tiny shard on said domain. and the database provider that allows lookups and insertion from different authors into "one entity owned" colascend page two pairs of eyes can see ...in a language the brain can parse and get upset about.