A Facebook court battle: Is ‘liking’ something protected free speech?

[mark1447]

Daniel Ray Carter Jr. logged on to Facebook and did what millions do each day: He “liked” a page by clicking the site’s thumbs up icon. The problem was that the page was for a candidate who was challenging his boss, the sheriff of Hampton, Va.

 

That simple mouse click, Carter says, caused the sheriff to fire him from his job as a deputy and put him at the center of an emerging First Amendment debate over the ubiquitous digital seal of approval: Is liking something on Facebook protected free speech?

 

Carter filed a lawsuit claiming that his First Amendment rights had been violated, and his case has reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. This week, Facebook and the ACLU filed briefs supporting what they say is Carter’s constitutional right to express his opinion, signaling the case’s potentially precedent-setting nature.

 

The interest was sparked by a lower court’s ruling that “liking” a page does not warrant protection because it does not involve “actual statements.” If the ruling is upheld, the ACLU and others worry, a host of Web-based, mouse-click actions, such as re-tweeting (hitting a button to post someone else’s tweet on your Twitter account), won’t be protected as free speech.

 

“We think it’s important as new technologies emerge . . . that the First Amendment is interpreted to protect those new ways of communicating,” said Rebecca K. Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia. “Pressing a ‘like’ button is analogous to other forms of speech, such as putting a button on your shirt with a candidate’s name on it.”

 

Facebook’s like button appears next to many different types of content on the site, from photos of a friend’s kids to an organization’s page to news articles. When someone clicks the button, an announcement is posted on his or her profile saying that the user likes that piece of content. The like is usually displayed to the user’s Facebook friends as well. Facebook says more than 3 billion likes and comments are registered every day.

 

The like controversy is just one of many thorny issues surrounding social media in the workplace.

 

Read the Rest:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/a-facebook-court-battle-is-liking-something-protected-free-speech/2012/08/08/538314fe-e179-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_story.html

[N4 Via Merrick Rd]

Some people today just make a mountain outta molehill outta a simple OPINION. and now a LIKE button I tell ya' people these days this kinda stuff make really pissed

[realizm]

Funny, yesterday I had to do an employee a favor by first wiping out her browser data saved from surfing though facebook, then log in as a local administator on her workstation and wipe out the event logs. The network administator can still see it if he looks hard enough into whatever network activity the servers recorded but it looks like now he could care less. Anyway, the reason I did that was in case her manager requests me or another computer tech to perform a sweep. Sorry boss I am not a tool.

 

Yep employers will try to get an employee for breaking company policy by surfing "unauthorised" sites if he or she is trying to get back at an employee by means of retaliation (also breaking company policy in many cases), however if you're on good terms with the office managers (and obviously the IT department) then you be all right.

 

Man this Cafe Bustello got me wired.... this is some strong @$$ coffee....

[realizm]

OK I admit it. I am a big fan of Maxim.com nyctransitforums.com and she would have backmailed me have I not done that.