The internet is a wonderland of brilliant thought and discussion, albeit one that's frequently smothered under a vast blanket of pithy speech and pointless provocation or it simply drowned out by clouds and clouds of banality.There are two interactions that highlight the emptiness of digital etiquette better than anything else. First is the throwaway "favorite" of the last tweet in a thread, a move that says "This conversation is done, but I can't really say goodbye because we're never really gone from the internet, so I'll just give you this yellow star of approval."The second, and far more pervasive for the pixelated .jpeg sharing set, is the Facebook Like. People "like" your posts to show they're paying attention to you, in the expectation that you'll pay attention to them as well, probably by also "liking" their latest thought. (By the way, it's really annoying that we're still bumbling through this phase where we have to put a Facebook "like" in quotes to explain that it's something far different than actually liking things as humans have done for thousands of years.)Yet this is America, where all speech, no matter how inane, deserves the full protection of the law. The last thing anyone needs is to have police kicking down their door because they "liked" a page about weed on an internet website. Thankfully, a US court of appeals agrees.Yesterday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Facebook "likes" deserve First Amendment protection, comparing them to posting a political sign in your front yard. It's not "speech" as in actually speaking, but "likes" are a public affirmation of your beliefs, and in the US, the government can't discriminate against you for that.The case the decision stemmed from is actually quite fascinating. During an election in 2009, six staffers at the sheriff's office in the city of Hampton, Virginia were vocal in support for the sheriff's opponent. That support reportedly including the employees "liking" (the court uses quotes in its documents, by the way) and commenting on the opponent's Facebook page.When the incumbent won, he reappointed 147 of his 159 full-time employees, excluding the six named in the case, which led to the lawsuit. Facebook posts have regularly been held as protected by courts in the past. But in a 2012 decision on this case, District Judge Raymond Jackson ruled that the minute gesture of a "like" is "insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection."In reversing the decision, the 4th Circuit has laid clear that any speech, no matter how small, can receive First Amendment protection. It seems like a good precedent to set, as deciding that some communicative gestures are too small to be considered speech is a rather slippery slope. In America we need all the leeway we can get, to say whatever dumb thing we please.@derektmead
Advertisement