Q: I am aware that this may not be a First Amendment issue due to the fact that it concerns private citizens and a privately-held company. However, I would welcome any help you may be able to give me.
I belonged to a Facebook community that became a target of a self-proclaimed “troll army” which exists solely to silence opposing viewpoints. They do this by encouraging all members to report pages and posts they don’t like, regardless of whether Facebook policy has been violated. They also share target pages with each other so they can all flock there and essentially shut down the site with verbal abuse and annoying, irrelevant pictures. They have also been known befriend “enemy” page administrators in order to get admin privileges, which they then use to trash the page. Is there anything the victims of these trolls can do to convince Facebook to make changes that will make it more difficult for relentless, organized trolling to occur?
A: I am sorry to hear about your troubles related to the internet troll who seems to be stalking you via Facebook and other social networking sites. Unfortunately, we cannot provide any advice through this service on how you might go about addressing the situation with Facebook and the other online service providers. As a general matter, websites such as Facebook are immune from liability for user-generated content, and thus cannot be compelled to remove or otherwise alter material submitted by trolls (the exception being copyrighted or trademarked material submitted to a website by someone other than the copyright holder). That said, many social networking websites do have an interest in keeping their services void of such trolls, and as such may have policies or procedures through which you can report this individual as abusive. You may want to carefully review each website’s terms of use and other policies to see how you might go about reporting this person.
Bryan Cave LLP is general counsel for the First Amendment Coalition and responds to FAC hotline inquiries. In responding to these inquiries, we can give general information regarding open government and speech issues but cannot provide specific legal advice or representation.