When the access to opinions that differ from the majority in society are restricted, progress in (controversial) debates would quickly stagnate. A change in society often takes off because a small number of people disagree with the status quo and challenge it, such as for example pro-euthanasia activist Alain Cocq’s initiative to demonstrate his personal suffering due to a lack of access to active euthanasia in France. In September 2020, Facebook prohibited and blocked the live streaming of his euthanasia attempt. The social media platform did not refer to the fact that active euthanasia is illegal under French law, nor that President Macron has denied Cocq’s request for euthanasia. Rather, it based its decision solely on its own house rules. According to Facebook, allowing Cocq to stream his death would go against its Community Standards which prohibits portrayals of suicide.

One could wonder how that decision would have turned out if identical content was live streamed by a Dutch, a Canadian or a Colombian national – all countries where active euthanasia is legal. Despite the fact that there is no consensus on the legality of euthanasia worldwide, Facebook chose to regulate the matter privately, and consequently applies a unified rule to its 2.7 billion users worldwide. This paper focuses on the freedom of (online) private companies to draft and enforce such house rules. On the one hand, private companies enjoy the freedom to conduct business, which should not be unnecessary restricted by state intervention. On the other hand, online platforms have grown into major sources of information, with over 57 percent of US millennials, and over 50 percent of adults in seven European Member States, accessing their news through social media. With so many people actively using online platforms to impart information, restricting the access to legal content poses a risk to a pluralist debate, and consequently can negatively affect societal progress as a whole.

This paper sheds new light on the current debate on online content regulation. Firstly, it will show that European legislation predominantly focuses on the prevention of illegal and harmful content on online platforms. A discussion on the regulation of legal content by (monopolistic) private companies has been largely omitted in the European Union. Secondly, it will evaluate whether the current European legal framework can curve this type of ‘selective censorship’ by private companies. To do so, the author focuses on the limits of the platforms’ freedom to conduct a business, and subsequently assessed whether current European consumer protection laws, aiming at the protection of the weaker party, are sufficient to safeguard users’ fundamental rights protection. Lastly, the paper defines to what extent online platforms can limit online access to legal content in their house rules and concludes whether it is time to look closer into the desirability of additional European regulation.