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Swiss Court Convicts Man For “Liking” Defamatory Facebook Post In Landmark Ruling
Melanie Hall, Berlin
A man who ‘liked’ a Facebook post accusing another man of anti- Semitism and racism has been convicted of defamation in a landmark ruling by a Swiss judge.
In the first case of its kind in Switzerland, the 45-year-old unnamed defendant from Zurich was found guilty after he ‘liked’ several posts on Facebook accus- ing Erwin Kessler, the president of an animal rights group, of racism and anti- Semitism.
The posts came about during discus- sions on Facebook over which animal welfare groups should be allowed to take part in a large vegan street festival in Switzerland, Veganmania Schweiz.
Posts describing Mr Kessler as racist, anti-Semitic or fas- cist, and his organi- sation as a neo-Nazi association, were liked by a number of people, including the defendant.
Mr Kessler then brought a case against the defen- dant, arguing that by ‘liking' the posts the man spread their content by making them visible to a larger number of
people, and that he acted with intent to harm and without any justifiable cause.
Zurich court judge Catherine Gerwig said at the trial on Monday said that ‘liking’ the posts was “spreading a value judgement”, reported newspaper the Tages Anzeiger.
She said that a 'like' is associated with a positive, meaning he clearly supported the posts' content. The court ruled that the defendant couldn’t prove that the state- ments about Mr Kessler were true or that he had "serious
reasons" to believe them to be so.
In 1998, Mr Kessler was in fact convicted of racial discrimina- tion in relation to his efforts to prevent the lifting of a ban on shechita, a Jewish religious method of slaughtering animals for food in order to produce kosher meat.
However, the court ruled that it does not mean he can be accused of racism without current proof some 20 years later, and the
defendant was hand- ed a suspended fine.
Other people have also since been con- victed of defaming Mr Kessler in the Swiss cities of Zurich, Lucerne and Bern, according to the Tages Anzeiger.
For media lawyer Martin Steiger, the conviction shouldn’t be taken to mean that from now on, anyone liking posts may be at risk of being prosecuted for defamation.
“It always depends on what a ‘like’ means and what someone was aim- ing to achieve with it,” he told the Tages Anzeiger. “A ‘like’ doesn’t always mean
that someone likes the content of a post. If, for instance, there’s an accident, then it also means expressing sympa- thy. Or that you find it good that some- one shares some- thing on Facebook.”
Mr Steiger said that the introduction a year ago on Facebook of a wider variety of ways to react to a post with a symbol – a ‘sad’ face, a ‘wow’ face or an ‘angry’ face - did- n’t change the inher- ent ambiguity of what someone means to say with it.
“It’s often unclear
which option is suit- able,” he said. “And like before, the ‘like’ is the standard option.” But the defendant in this case had said in court that he sup- ported the content and wanted to dis- seminate it – the conviction was therefore “not neces- sarily unjustified”, said Mr Steiger.
A brief pause before clicking ‘like’ doesn’t hurt though, he added: “Whoever clicks ‘like’ on con- tent on Facebook should know what they want mean by it.”
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