➡️After the eighteen-month legal battle Meta (the owner of Facebook) re-platformed the Polish political party “Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość” (Confederation of Freedom and Independence), initially banned in January 2022.
👉 In the dispute with Meta, Konfederacja is represented by GP Partners Gawroński, Biernatowski sp.k.
We decided to take up the that fight because of the seriousness of the violations of civil rights and freedoms, as well as the threats to freedom and state sovereignty arising from the digitalisation and centralisation of global information flows.
➡️ Global information platforms show how weak the constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom of expression and political activity are vis-à-vis the technology giants, and how vulnerable state sovereignty is in the digital world.
➡️ From the outset, we have treated this case as a cross-cutting issue that benefits all Poles, regardless of their political views. Therefore, in the proceedings we request that the court declare that Meta does not have the right to interfere with the content published on Facebook by all Polish political parties, all members of parliament, all senators, the President of the Republic of Poland and all candidates for these offices, except for content that is illegal or restricted by the laws of the Republic of Poland.
➡️Meta said: “Following the announcement by the WHO that the Covid-19 virus no longer poses a global health threat, and given the upcoming parliamentary elections in Poland, we’ve decided that the public interest now outweighs the risk of direct harm to the page. We are therefore reinstating Konfederacja’s website and allowing its content to be published”. (Rzeczpospolita.pl)
➡️ Mark Zuckerberg admitted recently on the Lex
Fridman podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4fRgnuFgQ),
that Facebook’s censorship was a mistake and undermined trust in the platform:
“Unfortunately, I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true. That stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust” he added.
➡️ We would like to thank to Professor Ryszard Piotrowski, whose legal opinion highlighted the nature and extent of the constitutional violations associated with the Meta’s actions against Konfederacja’s Facebook profile.
➡️It is up to Konfederacja to decide on its next steps, including whether to seek redress for taking down the page and ignoring the Polish court’s decision to lift the block on the Konfederacja’s profile, and whether to confront the question of how much Poland can be bought and how much an individual Pole’s active voting rights are worth in a dispute with Facebook. We urge Konfederacja to decide to address these issues in court on behalf of all Poles, including those whose views are closer to other political options.
👉 The GP Partners team on the case is Maciej Gawronski, Piotr Biernatowski, Marek Sliwinski.
#Konfederacja #Meta #Facebook #Precedent #GPPartners
