Israeli Supreme Court Authorizes The Self-Regulatory Content Takedown Arrangement Between The Gov't And Online Platforms

• Published date: 30 April 2021
• Subject Matter: Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Technology, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Civil Law, Security, New Technology
• Law Firm: Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz
• Author: Mr Haim Ravia and Dotan Hammer

The Israeli Supreme Court has scrutinized and authorized the unofficial arrangement for the removal of harmful content published on online platforms. The arrangement was voluntarily established between the Israeli Ministry of Justice's Cyber Unit and platforms such as Facebook but is not based on any statutory authority.

The Court's judgment was delivered on a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel who argued that the Cyber Unit operates an "Alternative Enforcement" mechanism which subverts the right to due process and unlawfully restricts freedom of expression on social networks. The Cyber Unit objected to the petition, arguing that the takedown requests submitted to the platforms focus mainly on egregious content such as incitement to terror, content endangering child safety, etc.

The court authorized Cyber Unit's self-regulatory arrangement on several grounds. First, the petitioners laid insufficient evidence to establish the infringement of civil rights, particularly given that the content taken down was published by Artificial Intelligence bots (i.e., algorithms) which are not humans eligible for civil rights. Second, the Cyber Unit's takedown requests are not official state action that encroaches...