A user sought financial compensation, claiming he was unlawfully blocked from the Facebook account of the local council where he resides and from the Facebook accounts of the mayor. He argued that this action infringed upon his freedom of expression and his right to receive essential information from the local authority.
The Court held that blocking a user on the Facebook accounts of elected officials or a local authority does not justify financial compensation. In Israel the freedom of expression derives from Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, and as such, it does not constitute a "statutory duty" that establishes a cause of action for tortious compensation. The provisions of Basic Laws are general and principled instructions that establish a normative standard of conduct rather than a source for financial compensation in the event of their violation. To justify tortious compensation, one must demonstrate negligence or the breach of a specific statutory duty. In this case, the user was initially blocked from the council's page as well as the mayor’s business and private pages; later on, the blocks on the council page and the mayor’s business page were removed, leaving him blocked only on the mayor’s private page. There is no specific statutory duty requiring a council or a mayor not to block a user from Facebook profiles; at most, this concerns a normative standard of conduct. Furthermore, it cannot be argued that the mayor owed the user a duty of care or that, by initially blocking him from all pages, her conduct amounted to negligence. It appears this resulted merely from a "flawed understanding," which does not rise to the level of negligence. Consequently, there are no grounds to award financial compensation under these circumstances.