European Online Censorship Could Go Global After Court Opinion

An opinion by a top adviser to the European Union Court of Justice could lead to worldwide online censorship of content that politicians, even dictators, don’t like. The opinion was filed Tuesday by EU Court Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, in the case of an Austrian Green Party politician who sued to have a critical Facebook post about her taken down, according to a report by Forbes.com.  The opinion, which has not yet been upheld by the EU court, came in the case of Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek of Austria’s Green Party, who was the subject of critical comments made on the social media platform Facebook, posted by a Facebook user. The comments were not outrageous or personal, but instead focused on Glawischnig-Piesczek’s policy views, according to Forbes. In the United States, the right to criticize politicians and government officials—even in extreme, over-the-top ways—is deeply enshrined in the political system, and protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Not so in Austria, apparently, where a court ruled in her favor, ordering Facebook to remove the post, and prevent any future reposting of the critical remarks. The court even ordered that Facebook censor similar comments about the politician that may attempt to make the same critical points, but with different wording. But the potential censorship didn’t stop there, with Szpunar issuing his advisory opinion saying that Facebook would likely be compelled to remove and prevent the post from appearing not only in Austria or elsewhere in the EU, but in the United States and anywhere else in the world, according to a Bloomberg News report.  Oddly, however, in January, the same Advocate General issued an advisory opinion in a similar case that appears to take the exact opposite position from the view expressed in his Tuesday opinion. In that case, Google challenged Europe’s “right to be forgotten,” which gives EU citizens the right to have any online information about themselves removed from search engine databases. Google argued that the “right to be forgotten” should apply only inside the EU, and not in other countries that have no such law. Szpunar agreed with Google.  But in the recent Facebook case, he wrote that the EU digital services law “does not regulate the territorial scope of an obligation to remove information disseminated via a social network platform, it does not preclude a host provider from being ordered to remove such information worldwide.” In a statement, Facebook said that the Advocate General’s opinion “undermines the long-standing principle that one country should not have the right to limit free expression in other countries.” Photo By Gregor Ter Heide / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain