On social media, each of us must take responsibility for what we say, but sometimes they can also condemn us for what others say. This is what happened now with the owner of a Facebook account, who was convicted by the Supreme Court following a series of comments that third parties posted on his wall.
A phrase that makes you think about the use of our networks, what we allow ourselves to write about them and to what extent certain publications can assure us justice.
Responsibility not only on your messages. The Supreme Court ruled that the owner of the Facebook account is responsible for comments posted by third parties. The case stems from some comments published between 2016 and 2018. Before the decision of the Supreme Court, the Tribunal of A Coruña forced to compensate those affected with 3,000 euros following some insults published. A fine, now reiterated, for which the owner of the Facebook account from which the insults were made is responsible.
Guilty for not removing the insults. The underlying argument is that the account holder is responsible for not deleting those messages. Here the Supreme argues it from several points.
The first is that Facebook offers “a great breadth in the administration and control that the owner has over his Facebook profile”. The owner can go from blocking someone to replying, hiding, reporting, marking as spam, and even deleting. A whole series of actions that in the specific case have not been carried out.
Be careful not to understand. The owner “cannot simply ignore what is published on his profile by other users, for the sole and simple reason that the authorship of what is published does not correspond to him, but to others”, argues the Supreme Court. It is a clear reminder that in the face of insults and those messages that violate the fundamental right to honour, one cannot simply look the other way.
The Supreme Court says that the “excuse of censorship” is useless. When the account holder sees “obvious tampering” and does nothing, they are participating. And here the Supreme Court explains that his position cannot be excused for “lack of legitimacy, danger of censorship or difficulty of weighing”.
There’s what they call a “responsive duty of care.” Come on, sitting and watching is not an option as we are witnessing an attack on our right to honor and we would be guilty of omission. To make matters worse, in the specific case, the owner himself had suppressed the comments of a third party who asked for common sense and moderation.
It is not directly applicable to networks like Twitter. The Supreme Court has made it clear that one must be responsible for others’ postings on Facebook, but this is not strictly applicable to other social networks such as Twitter, as there is no “personal wall” as such. In this sense, we cannot directly delete the tweets of other users.
Tendency to value the message more than the ways. The jurisprudence on freedom of expression in Spain is very diverse. Each specific case is a different world and not all cases can be included under the same umbrella.
We witnessed a representative case in July last year, where the Provincial Court of Madrid dismissed the case in which two posts had been deleted in a forum. It was argued that “through them the right to free expression of ideas and opinions is exercised, it being clear that only a serious attack on the image of the person mentioned in the text would justify the limitation of the fundamental right in conflict with the right to free expression” . The case of the Supremo was one of clear insults and therefore the responsibility was extended to the owner of the Facebook account.
Image | Joshua Hoehne
