There’s almost no money involved and the issue that prompted the court case disappeared long ago but even so, the recent legal win over social media giant Meta by the owner of the Teatotaller cafes might have big repercussions.

That’s because the Dec. 29, 2023, ruling by Judge Sawako Gardner in 7th Circuit District Court in Dover is one of the few times that federal decency rules were not accepted as legal cover for a social media site after it removed or blocked posts or accounts.

“Now is the time that people might say: This did pierce through the Communication Decency Act’s presumed dominance over the social media landscape,” said Emmett Soldati, who has been fighting Meta over a canceled Instagram account since 2018. “Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, they’re always using this federal statute to get cases thrown away. Here’s an example of a case where it didn’t get thrown out.”

The CDA, passed in 1996, gave many internet services including social media sites the status of publisher when hosting material written by other people. This provides them sweeping legal protections under the constitutional right of free speech.

In his 16-page ruling, Gardner wrote that the canceling of Teatotaller’s Instagram account was a breach of contract “based on specific promises made by the defendant in the Terms of Use” rather than a publishing decision based on content.

“Accordingly, the defendant is not entitled to immunity under the CDA,” he wrote.

At issue is what was a thriving Instagram business account for the original Teatotaller cafe in Somersworth that was canceled in 2018 for reasons that remain unclear. Soldati still doesn’t know if he violated the rules for a commercial Instagram account or if Instagram got mad at Soldati’s promotion of gay rights or whether it was just a mistake that Meta, the corporate owner of Instagram and Facebook, is too embarrassed to admit.

Either way, it cost him a lot of business which is why he sued, acting as his own lawyer to keep costs down.

Initially he lost when a court said the CDA protected Instagram from legal action. But he appealed and to the surprise of many, he won in the state Supreme Court, which overturned the decision and said Soldati had the right to go to trial on the grounds of breach of contract.

That sent Soldati back to Dover to try to convince a judge of his position. “A lot of people thought it was a long shot,” he admitted.

What happens now?

The court awarded Soldati a whopping $264.58, consisting of a $100 judgment plus $145 in costs and $19.68 in interest, so he won’t be retiring any time soon.

In theory, he could try to get the Instagram account reinstated but since the Somersworth cafe no longer exists and he has thriving online accounts for the two cafes he has since opened in Concord and Dover, that would be pointless, he said.

“That’s part of Facebook’s whole jam – draw it out, hope I’ll quit. So injunctive relief of that kind is meaningless,” Soldati said. “The amount is nominal compared to getting documentation from a court that they did do something wrong here.”

The ruling is far from a blanket undoing of the CDA. Gardner’s decision discusses other cases that have successfully involved CDA as a defense, including the removal of posts about Muslim-Jewish relations and the failure to remove nude photos, the latter involving something called “promissory estoppel,” to clarify the distinction.

It also doesn’t address a bigger issue: the fact that a single company, Meta, has a near-stranglehold on the social media landscape so vital to small businesses, via its ownership of both Facebook and Instagram, especially with the decline of Twitter and the increasing concern over the Chinese government’s control of Tik-Tok.

Nonetheless, the win provides a real feeling of satisfaction, Soldati said, as well as holding out hope for others.

“The biggest thing, especially for small business owners … this stands as one precedent as actually you can win. It’s going to be harder for Facebook to dismiss cases in the future.”