A Belgian court of appeal has ordered Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to pay €27,779 in damages to Vlaams Belang MEP Tom Vandendriessche.
The court ruled that the social media giant had unfairly censored the conservative politician for his ‘hateful’ posts, Belgian media report.
It is the first time a social media platform has been legally penalized for implementing such a ‘shadowban’—a process which Meta has always denied ever employing, and which appears nowhere in its Terms of Service. Shadowbanning is the widely used name for hiding users or their content from view without making the process explicit to the user. The person targeted is never notified by the social media company responsible, creating the impression that his message is not resonating with an audience.
The ruling provides concrete evidence of the censorious way technology companies aim to control the narrative by voluntarily imposing ‘European (Union) values’ on internet users.
While leftist-operated social media firms and allied liberal media have often painted shadowbanning as a conspiracy theory concocted by the Right, the Twitter Files, released since Elon Musk took over the platform now renamed X, showed it to be a routine operational mechanism.
This specific shadowban dates back to February 2021, when Meta first placed it on Tom Vandendriessche’s Facebook page. As a result, his posts became less visible, significantly decreasing their reach.
It did not stop there for Vandendriessche, however, as a few months later, his advertising account was blocked outright, with temporary restrictions being placed on his access to it.
Meta supported the measure by arguing that some of Vandendriessche’s posts had violated Facebook’s guidelines, including ‘hate speech’ and ‘support for hateful organizations’. But, as the court determined, the social media giant could not produce any evidence for this.
Following the ruling, the MEP wrote on X that it was a “first victory against Big Tech.”
In a separate press release from his party, Vandendriessche said that taking a tech giant to court is “practically impossible,” since “you don’t enter the fight on a level playing field. I hope this ruling makes it clear to Facebook that they can no longer censor me, together with many citizens, without consequences.”
“These shadowbans are a dangerous practice in light of free speech,” Vandendriessche continued:
A platform can sanction someone, and claim that no sanction was taken at all. There is no appeal, and so it is impossible to reverse. That is why it is important that the court of appeals not only recognized its existence, but also that it was actively applied by Facebook.
The court further established that Facebook had profiled Vandendriessche based on his political beliefs. It is on this basis that Facebook must compensate for additional advertising costs and reputational damage.
Vandendriessche hopes that this ruling will be a warning to all tech giants:
Big Tech poses a danger to our democracy. They can influence elections by promoting certain opinions, or making them invisible. In the next legislature [Belgium will hold federal and regional elections on June 9th, in which it is predicted Flemish Interest will make significant gains, becoming the largest party in Flanders] protecting free speech on social media will be an absolute priority.
