A federal court upheld the First Amendment rights of users online on Thursday, finding the Arkansas State Police unlawfully used Facebook‘s content moderation tools to censor speech on the department’s page.
The agency used Facebook’s built-in profanity filter to the strongest available setting and imposed a custom filter blocking words such as “pig,” “copper,” and “jerk,” which automatically deletes any users’ posts making such comments.
“But people are free to say those words,” wrote Chief U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. in the court’s opinion. “The First Amendment protects disrespectful language.”
Thursday’s decision also gave two explanations for how the department violated constitutional rights, the first being the broad effects of Facebook’s profanity filtering system.
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“The State Police doesn’t know what words it is actually blocking. This information is apparently unavailable,” according to the court’s opinion. “Insofar as the testimony disclosed, Facebook’s community standards might filter out some words even if the State Police turned the page’s profanity filter off.”
The court recognized the “slang terms ‘pigs’, and ‘copper’ can have an anti-police bent” but ultimately affirmed, “People are free to say those words.”
The decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas on Oct. 1 could set a precedent for how universities and public colleges regulate online speech.
In 2020, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — a nonprofit civil liberties group established in 1999 — conducted a survey using public records requests from 198 institutions and universities, finding that 77% of colleges use social media blacklist techniques to censor public speech.
One facet of the survey noted a number of colleges — including Portland State University, Oklahoma State University, the University of Arizona, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — used social media filters to inhibit users from making posts with political candidates such as “Trump,” “Bernie,” or “Hillary.”
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the ASP and UNC-Chapel Hill but did not immediately receive a response.
