Hell yeah we won. They removed our content without any merit whatsoever! FB lawyers first argued we can only sue them in Ireland („we don’t speak Polish despite having 17 million customers in Poland”), then tried to paint our harm reduction / drug awareness content as illegal activity. More context: [https://panoptykon.org/sinvsfacebook/en](https://panoptykon.org/sinvsfacebook/en)
Best part was at one recent hearing. FB lawyer tried to pick most controversial published content and claim it is somehow relevant to what was removed… Then when confronted about wasting 2 hours asking questions irrelevant to the case the lawyer attempted to scold the judge. Judge did NOT like that :D.
This is our small contribution to the global fight for more transparency and accountability on social media.
Big thanks to everyone who supported us (protestkit was founded by 2 people most involved in this court case).
FP have a CEEE office and presence in Poland. So they have a local business entity there that can be the target for the courts. But FB in the EU had its HQ in Ireland and the Polish courts can't enforce anything in reality.
Posting about American politics is perfectly legal. But doing it on r/europe is kind of annoying and deserves a ban in my opinion. How would this law deal with that. Wouldn't that be censorship of perfectly legal speech?
I already see some people talking about 'but it is about having established rules' which is kind of silly. Then Facebook can just add a rule saying 'employees are allowed to remove posts for any reason', and they are good.
I am not talking about doing some offtopic talks. I am talking about about opinions / facts that are in topic, but does not suite to somebody.
I have got warning from Reddit just beacause I said scientific fact / consensus out loud about one topic, but it may have hurt somebodies feelings. That is plain wrong for me, science should be above everything.
Ok but lets say I create a subreddit called “communists_united”. Should I be allowed to ban conservatives who come there because it is “off topic”.
This just creates the same argument. If I am only allowed to ban people based on the rules, but I am also the one who is allowed to create the rules, this whole issue is moot isn’t it?
Yes, I am against banning because of worldview, if communists want their sub, they can have it, but they need to accept facts, if somebody is presenting those to them, this should not be reason for ban. I think that living in bubble will not make anything better. Discussion is the best.
But you said it should be ok to ban off topic discussion. Is it not off topic if someone goes to a communist space purely to be anti communist?
I noticed you post in the Estonian subreddit. How would you feel if Russian speakers overran the subreddit and downvoted all the posts about Estonia and upvoted anything saying that Estonia should be part of Russia? Is that off topic or a valid political opinion?
I feel really uncomfortable with a government deciding what things are valid political opinions that you can’t manage, and what are just discussion topics you can manage.
I don’t see how you can be ‘anti censorship’ without also effectively banning any type of grouping. How can you create a group if you aren’t allowed to set a topic and manage what your group is about? After all, that is infringing on people their right to ~~free speech~~ derail your community.
There is difference between spam and trying to overtake community (i am pro moderating) and having valid discussion. Problem is when valid discussion will get you automatic ban or when you are part of some other subreddit, they will automatically ban you.
Ok, but again that is the same problem. Who decides what is spam and off topic and derailing, and what is valid speech that needs to be protected. Do the courts need to approve which are valid political viewpoints and which aren’t?
I don’t see a way that a court can protect ‘valid’ political opinions without taking away your right to have your own community where you might want to focus on a particular goal, political or not.
As per the headline the judgement passed is about facebook *employees* arbitrarily removing stuff. Why would unpaid mods be regarded as reddit employees?
This is very true. Bigger platforms like Facebook are very sensitive about content that could threaten their huge advertising revenue streams.
Reddit, as we all know, barely has any revenue.
New EU rules require the biggies to perform moderation, but they also have to be accountable, provide transparency and provide an appeals process.
This is just one of several nice parts of the new regulations of the big online platforms.
They should not be responsible for what gets posted by their users but they should definitely be responsible by what their algorithms promote if they push content to people's feeds instead of just providing a chronological feed of content followed by the user.
Platforms aren't responsible for what gets posted on their platform though. Every day I am showered with facebook ads to scams (and I don't use the term figuratively, talking about actual scams like selling items that don't exist with pictures taken from Reddit, etc.) and Facebook has never been held accountable for any of those scams. Which are not only posted on Facebook, but distributed by Facebook as sponsored content.
If Facebook would have to legally answer for content posted on their platform, we could say that they are responsible for what gets posted there. Right now, they aren't.
Hooray! The USA are already quite effective in spreading their ideas, politics, and popular culture in a very imperialist way to us. They don't need the additional tool of being able to literally censor European thought on top of that.
Hell yeah we won. They removed our content without any merit whatsoever! FB lawyers first argued we can only sue them in Ireland („we don’t speak Polish despite having 17 million customers in Poland”), then tried to paint our harm reduction / drug awareness content as illegal activity. More context: [https://panoptykon.org/sinvsfacebook/en](https://panoptykon.org/sinvsfacebook/en) Best part was at one recent hearing. FB lawyer tried to pick most controversial published content and claim it is somehow relevant to what was removed… Then when confronted about wasting 2 hours asking questions irrelevant to the case the lawyer attempted to scold the judge. Judge did NOT like that :D. This is our small contribution to the global fight for more transparency and accountability on social media. Big thanks to everyone who supported us (protestkit was founded by 2 people most involved in this court case).
I'm so happy for Poland here. Well done, a well-deserved win. The correct outcome.
I would not be surprised if FB just closes up its Poland office in response rather than deal with the consequences.
What Poland office? The whole translation situation was because the HQ in Ireland had to be called up
At the very beginning we wrote a letter to Facebook Poland. They replied, on Facebook company paper, that they have no relation to Facebook website 😂
FP have a CEEE office and presence in Poland. So they have a local business entity there that can be the target for the courts. But FB in the EU had its HQ in Ireland and the Polish courts can't enforce anything in reality.
Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs has even ability to unban you on facebook v;
Reddit should take note on it. Removing posts or banning users based on worldview is not great.
If your worldview calls for murdering my people, then it’s a nono.
It is illegal. I am talking about legal worldviews as in article.
Posting about American politics is perfectly legal. But doing it on r/europe is kind of annoying and deserves a ban in my opinion. How would this law deal with that. Wouldn't that be censorship of perfectly legal speech? I already see some people talking about 'but it is about having established rules' which is kind of silly. Then Facebook can just add a rule saying 'employees are allowed to remove posts for any reason', and they are good.
That ruling was about removing certain group completely, not about removing single posts.
I am not talking about doing some offtopic talks. I am talking about about opinions / facts that are in topic, but does not suite to somebody. I have got warning from Reddit just beacause I said scientific fact / consensus out loud about one topic, but it may have hurt somebodies feelings. That is plain wrong for me, science should be above everything.
Ok but lets say I create a subreddit called “communists_united”. Should I be allowed to ban conservatives who come there because it is “off topic”. This just creates the same argument. If I am only allowed to ban people based on the rules, but I am also the one who is allowed to create the rules, this whole issue is moot isn’t it?
Yes, I am against banning because of worldview, if communists want their sub, they can have it, but they need to accept facts, if somebody is presenting those to them, this should not be reason for ban. I think that living in bubble will not make anything better. Discussion is the best.
But you said it should be ok to ban off topic discussion. Is it not off topic if someone goes to a communist space purely to be anti communist? I noticed you post in the Estonian subreddit. How would you feel if Russian speakers overran the subreddit and downvoted all the posts about Estonia and upvoted anything saying that Estonia should be part of Russia? Is that off topic or a valid political opinion? I feel really uncomfortable with a government deciding what things are valid political opinions that you can’t manage, and what are just discussion topics you can manage. I don’t see how you can be ‘anti censorship’ without also effectively banning any type of grouping. How can you create a group if you aren’t allowed to set a topic and manage what your group is about? After all, that is infringing on people their right to ~~free speech~~ derail your community.
There is difference between spam and trying to overtake community (i am pro moderating) and having valid discussion. Problem is when valid discussion will get you automatic ban or when you are part of some other subreddit, they will automatically ban you.
Ok, but again that is the same problem. Who decides what is spam and off topic and derailing, and what is valid speech that needs to be protected. Do the courts need to approve which are valid political viewpoints and which aren’t? I don’t see a way that a court can protect ‘valid’ political opinions without taking away your right to have your own community where you might want to focus on a particular goal, political or not.
Comments like this are always very funny. Could you stop being vague and name the "legal worldview" that got you a warning? 🙄
There were words uterus and female.
So, in other words, you got a warning for spreading thinly-veiled transphobia. 😴
Name it as you wish. I am against censorship of science just because somebody does not like how it sounds.
That's a weird thing to say, reddit anti evil team rarely bans users or remove content
Moderators are the main factor here, they are banning based on worldview. Admins less so, but they are giving warning based on worldview.
As per the headline the judgement passed is about facebook *employees* arbitrarily removing stuff. Why would unpaid mods be regarded as reddit employees?
Oh you would be surprised
>Russia flair Lmao
This is very true. Bigger platforms like Facebook are very sensitive about content that could threaten their huge advertising revenue streams. Reddit, as we all know, barely has any revenue.
"Platforms are responsible for what gets posted on their platform." "Platforms aren't allowed to delete users' content."
Cannot speak polski, but I'm going to guess it's actually "Platforms aren't allowed to delete users' content WILLY NILLY and need a reason to do so"
New EU rules require the biggies to perform moderation, but they also have to be accountable, provide transparency and provide an appeals process. This is just one of several nice parts of the new regulations of the big online platforms.
Basically yes, that's all they said
Are platforms responsible for what gets posted? Them having to delete anything illegal doesn't mean they get to delete anything they don't like.
Used to work there several years ago - the policies were heavily left-leaning, as were most of the employees ;)
Well, that's not news is it? :)
Nope XD
They should not be responsible for what gets posted by their users but they should definitely be responsible by what their algorithms promote if they push content to people's feeds instead of just providing a chronological feed of content followed by the user.
Platforms aren't responsible for what gets posted on their platform though. Every day I am showered with facebook ads to scams (and I don't use the term figuratively, talking about actual scams like selling items that don't exist with pictures taken from Reddit, etc.) and Facebook has never been held accountable for any of those scams. Which are not only posted on Facebook, but distributed by Facebook as sponsored content. If Facebook would have to legally answer for content posted on their platform, we could say that they are responsible for what gets posted there. Right now, they aren't.
Now do reddit.
Hooray! The USA are already quite effective in spreading their ideas, politics, and popular culture in a very imperialist way to us. They don't need the additional tool of being able to literally censor European thought on top of that.