Appleby v UK

Appleby v United Kingdom (ECtHR)

Area: General free expression

Principle: Free Expression does not guarantee a right to be given a platform.

In the case of Appleby, the ECtHR held that the free expression and free assembly rights of the Applicants had not been breached when they were refused permission to campaign and collect signatures in a privately-owned town centre.

Applicants argued that the State had an obligation to ensure that they were able to express themselves politically on this land and that the State was responsible for the interference with their rights as the town centre had been built by the State and later transferred into private ownership.

The Court held that states may sometimes have a positive obligation to regulate access to private property in order to protect certain Convention rights, but that in this particular case the Applicants had not been prevented from communicating their political message as they could (and did) exercise those rights by campaigning in other locations.

With reference to intermediary liability and the obligations of online platforms, this case applies to establish the point that users do not necessarily have a “right” to a platform, and that the State has no obligation to ensure that an online platform or service respects the same Freedom of Expression requirements that would be expected of the State itself.

Due to the fact that on the internet there are innumerable other services to which a user could move to express their message, platforms are free to implement their own terms of service and remove whatever content they desire without the State having any obligation to intervene.