10 February
“Who is the Guardian of Free Speech? Meta‘s Oversight Board and (other) Courts and Dispute Resolution Mechanisms”
Hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in cooperation with Columbia Global Freedom of Expression.
The spread of misinformation and hate speech has led to calls for a more active role of social networks in curating content. Others fear censorship and arbitrariness. In this stormy debate, Meta decided to share the responsibility for the enforcement of its community guidelines on Facebook and Instagram by setting up the Oversight Board (OB), an independent body which can review decisions taken by Meta on the removal of posts and blocking of users.
At the same time, State courts in Europe intervene more and more in the content moderation process, inter alia with the German Bundesgerichtshof annulling parts of Facebook’s Terms and Conditions and the German Bundesverfassungsgericht as well as the Italian Corte Costituzionale ordering Meta to unblock users. US-American courts, on the other hand, have regularly rejected claims against social media companies aiming at the reinstatement of content or user accounts.
Oversight Board’s Co-Chair and former Inter-American Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression Professor Catalina Botero-Marino (Global Freedom of Expression, Columbia University), Professor Martin Eifert (Humboldt University Berlin), Professor Matthias Kettemann (University of Innsbruck / Hans Bredow Institute, Hamburg) and Erik Tuchtfeld (MPIL) will discuss the relationship between State courts and emerging private dispute resolution mechanisms in the realm of content moderation, their effect on freedom of speech on the internet and new regulatory proposals in instruments such as “Europe’s Constitution for Internet Platforms”, the Digital Services Act.
The discussion will be moderated by Alexandra Kemmerer (MPIL), and will be open for comments and questions by registered participants.
Please register below at the following link and contact at berlin@mpil.de with any questions.