But Facebook’s Not a Country: How to Interpret Human Rights Law for Social Media Companies - Yale Journal on Regulation

However, the ICCPR and other relevant human-rights law cannot be used for commercial content moderation right off the shelf; it must be interpreted for this novel purpose in at least two ways. First, the law was written and ratified for use by countries, not private companies. The ICCPR allows speech restrictions on only five grounds–national security, public order, public health, morals, and the rights and reputations of others. No other grounds are permitted[32]– profit-making for example. As Evelyn Mary Aswad has argued, companies prioritize profit, and perhaps cannot be expected to put the public interest above it.[33]