SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION platform challenged AWS’s decision under competition law. The US District Court for the Western Court of Washington dismissed Parler’s application for a preliminary injunction to prevent AWS’s suspension of its services (2021). Parler was founded in 2018, describing itself as “a conservative microblogging alternative and competitor to Twitter.” It used cloud computing services provided by AWS for hosting its application. During the 2020 presidential election, Parler saw an exponential increase in its online traffic as many users left Twitter to join the allegedly “uncensored” alternative. AWS noticed an increase of “illegal, harmful, or offensive” content posted by Parler’s users, infringing AWS’s Acceptable Use Policy. As Parler did not –in AWS’s opinion– sufficiently moderate such content, it decided to suspend the service in the aftermath of the January 6 US Capitol attack. Similar to the Freedom Watch case, Parler’s claim was based on competition law. It alleged a conspiracy of AWS and Twitter to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of the latter. As AWS claimed that no such agreement with Twitter existed, and Parler was unable to provide any evidence in this regard, the case collapsed. 2. Claims to remove content or accounts Social media platforms have not only been ordered to “carry” particular content, but also to remove content they are hosting. Many of these cases deal with the same two core issues: The first is the monitoring of content and the assessment of its illegality —which many deem fundamentally incompatible with the idea of an open internet where everybody can publish its ideas. The second is the question of the (extra-) territoriality of court orders to remove content. Should the illegality of content in one state lead to its global removal? Or does it suffice when the contested content is not accessible anymore from the court’s homestate (geo-blocking)? The first is under constant suspicion of provoking a “race to the bottom”, in which only the most harmless content, allowed in every single country of the world, can stay online. The latter seems like an unsatisfying result for victims who would like to have defamation and lies against them removed from the digital public sphere. The first important decision by a Human Rights Court regarding the obligation to remove content (and a platform’s liability when failing to do so) did not address the duties of the biggest social media platforms known worldwide. Rather the case concerned the comment section of an online national newspaper. In Delfi As v. Estonia (2015), the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) Grand Chamber concluded that Estonia did not breach Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) —the right to freedom of expression— when it held Delfi AS, an online news outlet, liable for comments made by its readers. The Court considered that the award of damages was prescribed by Estonian law and served the legitimate aim of protecting the reputation and rights of others. Hence, the Court concluded that since Delfi set up the electronic infrastructure for allowing defamatory statements —and should have known that the specific article could have the potential to produce hundreds of angry, threatening comments—, it could be seen as a “publisher” or “discloser” of the comments. Thus, the award of damages (€320 in this case) met the threshold of being “necessary in a democratic society” and did not violate the ECHR. The Court emphasized that defamatory information posted on the Internet could potentially remain there indefinitely and cause much greater harm than comments in traditional print or broadcast media. The Court’s decision was not undisputed: Judges Sajó and Tsotsoria considered the judgment, in their joint dissenting opinion, as “an invitation to self-censorship at its worst”. They emphasized that states “by putting pressure and imposing liability on those who control the technological infrastructure […], create an environment in which collateral or private-party censorship is the inevitable result”. In 2023, the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR upheld in Sanchez v. France the Fifth Section’s decision from 2021, which argued that the criminal conviction of a politician for comments published by other users on his Facebook page does not violate the claimant’s right to freedom of expression. While the Court stressed the importance of protecting freedom of expression in the context of political debate, it found that the French courts’ decision to convict the claimant had been based on relevant and sufficient reasons linked 14