In recent years, the authorities have been forced to adapt technological advances as tools for the proper exercise of their administration, providing, among other things, access to information for citizens.
One of these tools has been precisely the social networks, particularly the Twitter platform or now called “X” because of the facility it represents, the scope it has and, above all, the accessibility for most of the society.
With the foregoing, the Judicial Branch has been forced to innovate in its criteria and resolutions based on how social networks are used by the authorities within the scope of their jurisdiction.
In 2022, a Federal Court in Administrative Matters of Mexico City decided to confirm an amparo judgment from a District Court to a citizen who complained about the blocking of the “X” account by the then Mayor of Cuauhtémoc in Mexico City.
The arguments of the Federal Court of Appeals are remarkable because to reach this decision, the problem had to be approached from different perspectives.
First, the question was to determine if the blocking carried out by the Mayor was or was not an act of authority. Recalling that an act of authority is understood to be a de facto or de jure entity that establishes a relationship of supra-subordination with a private individual, that this relationship is established by law, which must be unilateral and create, modify or extinguish legal situations by itself and that, in order to issue this act, it is not necessary to go to the courts nor is it necessary to obtain the authorization of the will of the affected party.
Once the above is settled, it must be determined whether the user who blocked the complainant was under the obligation to provide transparency, allow access to his information and protect the personal data in its possession, which was verifiable because in this case it was a Mayor who should be ruled by the principle of transparency and access to information, so it was an obligation to have their respective websites containing relevant information for citizens, as well as to report on their activities.
Since the authority has the obligation to divulge information on the activities it carries out in the performance of its duties through the electronic media, it is clear that such obligation derives from its function as a public employee and, consequently, the individual has a correlative right to request the fulfillment of such obligation.
Now, since the Mayor decided to communicate with the citizens through a personal account, the Court considered that the legal consequences were adopted, basing its determination on the screenshots of the publications and the profile of the Mayor and on what the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has determined as a notorious fact.
In consequence, it is valid that to demonstrate the existence of a blocking of social networks by an authority that uses them as a tool for the exercise of its functions, it is enough to testify under oath the veracity of the attached screenshots, since the authority would be restricting the user’s access to the information.
Marcos Fabian Castro Cano
Associate
