The Court of Appeal of L'Aquila with the judgment 1659 of November 9, 2021 reconstructs the contractual relationship between the social network and the user who interacts in the community and expresses itself on the scope of freedom of expression of users within the social network.
The plaintiff filed a summary procedure to react to the suspension of his account, for 4 months, by the social network following the publication of some politically motivated posts.
In the first instance, the Court of First Instance sentenced Facebook to pay compensation of 15 thousand euros for moral damages. The present decision concerns the appeal presented by the social network before the Court of Appeal of L'Aquila.
First of all, the Court affirms, in this relationship marked by elements of internationality (intervening between a consumer resident in Italy and a supplier based in Ireland), the jurisdiction of the Italian Judge and the applicability of Italian law to decide the dispute.
It then defines its scope, since it is a contract for adhesion in which the ordinary aspects of contractual responsibility are relevant. It then pauses to analyze the nature of the relationship characterized by onerousness, recalling how free contracts are protected with less force than contracts for consideration (paradigmatic is the difference between donation and sale). The relationship is for consideration in that the patrimonial content of a service can be considered to exist also in those cases in which goods other than money are transferred as consideration for a service which, due to their potential for commercial exploitation, become susceptible to an economic and patrimonial evaluation. It is, in essence, the intrinsic suitability of personal data - legitimately acquired and processed - to be considered, because of the profitable commercial exploitation of the same by the social network.
The Court affirms another interesting principle regarding the clause that provides for the powers of Facebook to remove content and suspend accounts in case of violation of the policies of the social network. The same was considered valid and effective, not being able to be considered vexatious.
The Court finally examined the merits of the case, going to syndicate in concrete powers of Facebook: the work of social must not result in behaviors that violate the freedom of expression that, after granting permission to use their sensitive data and not for free, is the typical content and, so to speak, the raison d'être of the membership of a platform of this type, whose function is precisely to allow users to express themselves and share content that is important to them.
The Court of Appeal therefore deemed illegitimate the suspension of the account, given that "the mere publication of a photo with a comment that is limited to the expression of one's own thoughts (...) is not considered sufficient to violate the standards of the community".
Therefore, the Court ruled that, due to the content posted by the user, Facebook exceeded its censorship power, limiting, however, the compensation for damages in favor of the user to € 3,000, also considering the total number of members of the page that was about 2,500 contacts.