A Step Toward Facebook.gov? - Reason.com
Earlier this month Facebook launched a pilot program to give Maryland school officials their own complaint channel to flag content for takedown, with the stated aim of protecting teens from “cyber-bullying” whether in or out of school, a topic on which Maryland recently passed a new law.
As Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler seems to envision things (listen here), the channel will empower Maryland officials to seek takedown of speech that they deem to constitute bullying even if it violates no law: “We’re not going to go after you, but we are going to take down the language off of Facebook, because there’s no redeeming societal value and it’s clearly hurting somebody.”
Libertarians and First Amendment advocates, myself included, have reacted with alarm. Criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield:
While Facebook may be a private enterprise, fully entitled to decide what content is acceptable on its platform and similarly entitled to decide that its users will no longer be allowed to write “Suzy is a poo poo head” on the wall, it’s not that simple when the censor is a state actor and the content at issue is deemed offensive not because it violates any law, but because someone is empowered to stifle speech that doesn’t comport with their vision of redeeming societal value, whatever that means.
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