TechHive: Rest assured, your Facebook likes are now free speech

TechHive
TechHive helps you find your tech sweet spot. We guide you to products you'll love and show you how to get the most out of them. 
Your small business full-time assistant

Join the 500,000+ people using Shoeboxed to streamline accounting and bookkeeping. Turn a pile of receipts into digital data to save time, money and hassle.
From our sponsors
thumbnail Rest assured, your Facebook likes are now free speech
Sep 19th 2013, 16:44

The Constitution protects your right to like whatever inane Facebook page you want to, a federal appeals court in Virginia decided this week.

The decision was spurred by the sheriff of Hampton, Virginia, who fired his employees for liking his challenger's Facebook campaign page.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Traxler wrote in the court's decision that liking a political candidate's Facebook page is "the Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one's front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech."

Facebook, of course, is pleased with the decision. The social network's representatives argued before the appeals court earlier this year that likes are an essential part of communicating on the platform and should be protected as free speech.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions
Previous
Next Post »