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Floridaâs Supreme Court has ruled on something that most social media users already know: Facebook friendships are not real.
Specifically, the court said in a Nov. 15 opinion that a Facebook friendship between a judge and an attorney does not mean the judge is too biased to preside over that attorneyâs case.
Ruling on an appeal in a case where one side argued a trial court judge should be disqualified because of a Facebook friendship, the court added that even traditional, IRL friendship wouldnât necessarily be disqualifying, because the nature of friendship is âindeterminate.â
The ruling includes some philosophical musings on the meaning of friendship. For chief justice Charles Canady, who writes for the majority, a real friend, âis a person attached to another person by feelings of affection or esteem.â Meanwhile, a Facebook friend is a âperson digitally connected to another person by virtue of their Facebook âfriendship.’â And a Facebook friendship, he says, âdoes not objectively signal the existence of the affection and esteem involved in a traditional âfriendship.’â
Citing previous courtsâ rulings, the justice pointed out that you can have thousands of Facebook friends. Users also often canât recall every single person theyâve ever friended. Whatâs more, Facebook friends are often selected based on the platformâs algorithmic suggestions, and not personal interactions. In an inadvertent burn to Facebookâs mission of connecting people and building community, the justice writes:
Today it is commonly understood that Facebook âfriendshipâ exists on an even broader spectrum than traditional âfriendship.â Traditional âfriendshipâ varies in degree from greatest intimacy to casual acquaintance; Facebook âfriendshipâ varies in degree from greatest intimacy to âvirtual strangerâ or âcomplete stranger.â
Source:Â qz.com
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