Its power to suppress nude images, to take one example, has a huge potential impact on communications about visual art - including cinema and photography - as well as sex education and discussions of sexual politics. 7Īnd most of what Facebook proscribes is protected by the First Amendment. Facebook’s internal appeals process is mysterious at best. 6 But there is no judicial determination of illegality – just the best guess of Facebook’s censors. than any Supreme Court justice, any king or any president.” 4 Facebook’s “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” provides: “You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic incites violence or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” 5 Within Facebook’s broad ban, it’s true, reside a few categories of speech that the First Amendment does not protect: threats, incitement, and some subcategory of pornography that might be constitutionally unprotected obscenity under a local community standard. “Facebook,” as Jeffrey Rosen has said, wields “more power in determining who can speak.
FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, AND THE IMPENETRABLE WORLD OF PRIVATE CENSORSHIP