Range throttling: Right-wing MEP wins case against Meta

An appeals court in Ghent has ruled that Facebook unlawfully restricted the reach of the Belgian MEP Tom Vandendriessche from the far-right party Vlaams Belang ("Flemish Interests"). The Facebook parent company Meta must therefore pay the politician almost 28,000 euros in damages. Following the so-calledshadowbanningthat Facebook imposed in February 2021 due to violations of its house rules, the average reach of Vandendriessche's page is said to have fallen from 89,345 to 4614 views from March to December in the same year. The average then rose again to 24,284 in 2022. In 2023, it is said to have amounted to 21,198.

The dispute concerned eight specific articles that depicted a National Socialist book burning. However, the court in Bruges, which was initially called upon by Vandendriessche, complained that Meta had not been able to prove that the posts had Nazi connotations. The US company had not specified the number of infringements and measures required to restrict the reach. The only verifiable concrete message was a picture of burning books. However, the court of first instance was unable to see any "presence, support and promotion of dangerous hate organizations" in this. Vandendriessche had not glorified the Nazi regime, but had provided a context to denounce a form of alleged contemporary censorship.

Defending against range restriction difficult

The appeal courtalso foundthat Meta had "not acted in accordance with the principle of good faith" when imposing the ban. The platform operator had also failed to provide users with sufficient procedural guarantees if they were subject to certain sanctions due to alleged violations of the Facebook terms of use or comparable guidelines. Whether shadowbanning also constituted a breach of anti-discrimination laws was, according to the Ghent court, "not of practical importance". However, it also found a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In essence, the judges found that certain of the plaintiff's Facebook posts violated Facebook's terms of use and community guidelines, while others did not. Meta should therefore compensate Vandendriessche for the advertising costs he had to incur to compensate for the throttling. The company must also pay him 500 euros for damage to its reputation. Vandendriessche had initially demanded a significantly higher sum. After the verdict was announced , heneverthelessspoke of a "first victory against Big Tech".

Meta, on the other hand, said in aninitial reactionthat the court had also confirmed the provider's right in principle to impose sanctions such as temporarily or permanently blocking an account in order to punish rule violations. According to astudy by the Center for Democracy & Technology(CDT), shadowbanning is one of the most opaque content moderation practices in social media. Around ten percent of US users believe they have already been the victim of such a measure - primarily because of their political views (39 percent) or their positions on social issues (29 percent).

(anw)