City Government Can Use Facebook’s Anti-Bot Tool–Jalisi v. Poway

The City of Poway has a public Facebook page. Jalisi has been a critic of the city government, and he made critical posts on the city’s Facebook page. He claims that his posts were hidden or shadowbanned there. The City of Poway used the Meta Moderation Assist for its page. It flagged Jalisi’s posts as bot postings because “Plaintiff does not have a profile picture, has only one Facebook friend, and has no posts on his own profile.” The court says the deployment of Meta Moderation Assist isn’t inherently unconstitutional: “the restriction is facially content neutral….[Profiles] are flagged based on the presence of certain predictive factors, such as the absence of a profile picture or the absence of other Facebook friends. Thus, determining whether a comment may be hidden has nothing to do with the content of the comment.” [That’s true, though the tool does account for the content on the profile page.] “The City uses Meta Moderation Assist because it “does not have the resources nor…