Court rules that Politicians blocking followers on Social Media violates Free Speech
Back in October 2016 I had blogged about my experiences with censorship on Facebook, where I mentioned that the reporting functionalities provided by the social media network were “being abused […] to harass, silence and censor people, and is a serious violation of every individual’s natural right to free speech.” Interestingly a judge in the USA seems to agree in at least one specific instance:
Court Rules That Politicians Blocking Followers Violates Free Speech
This week, a federal court in Virginia tackled the issue when it ruled on behalf of a plaintiff blocked by a local county politician. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Brian Davison sued the chairwoman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, who temporarily banned him from her Facebook page after he posted criticism of local officials last year.” Judge James Cacheris found that she had violated Davison’s First Amendment rights by blocking him from leaving comment, because, in his judgment, the chairwoman, Phyllis Randall, was using her Facebook page in a public capacity. Though it was a personal account, she used it to solicit comments from constituents.
While the above instance is specifically about a politician abusing the functionality provided by Facebook to censor someone, I think that blocking or banning anyone on the social network — unless they are somehow violating someone else’s right to life (aggression) — is a severe violation of their right to free speech, which follows from their natural and universal right to life. And while the above example concerns blocking someone from posting on a specific page, it’s an even bigger violation of an individual’s right to free speech when you block them from posting on the entire network — including their own profile. And Facebook is being complicit in these violations by allowing it to happen and indeed providing the functionality for it, as are other social networks.
The above mentioned article by The Wall Street Journal was published on July 27th, 2017 — “coincidentally” the same day that Facebook banned me again for 30 days after someone reported something I had posted months ago that, according to Facebook, violated Facebook’s precious “community guidelines.” In the days prior to July 27th, I had been posting a lot of material related to local history and politics, and I suspect that it angered someone who, as usual, couldn’t handle the truth. They went into my profile history on Facebook, found something they could use against me and reported it to Facebook to get me banned. Although Facebook failed to tell me, I know what got reported, and that post was a few months old, which is evidence for the fact that someone really dug to find something to use against me. As I mentioned before this is an often used tactic to harass and silence people on social media.
After being banned again for another 30 days for who knows how many times now, it briefly crossed my mind to start a lawsuit against Facebook in order to get Fuckerberg to take note and stop this fucking bullshit. I wasn’t aware of any other legal action that was already being taken against Facebook for free speech violations, but I found out today that there’s quite some stuff going on already. It’ll be interesting to see if Fuckerberg will take note now and scale back on the censorship. I personally don’t believe in the legal system, as it’s simply part of the larger anti-social system of enslavement that we’re currently living in, and as such, doesn’t exist in service of the individual.
In the mean time, I had little choice but to continue sharing the information I was sharing right before I got blocked by Facebook, by advertising it on the network via my Facebook page (Fuckerberg appears to be more careful and tolerant when you pay him). As you can see in the below screenshot, it’s going to run for the next 30 days, i.e. for as long as my personal account is banned. “Congratulations,” to you who reported me.
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