The blogger is held responsible for derogatory messages posted by others. Comments are at risk
The story concerns a – false – report of a demonstration by migrants protesting because the reception centre where they were staying allegedly did not have a Sky connection
The First Civil Section of the Court of Cassation has reaffirmed, in its recent judgement No. 22999 of 2026, that a blogger is liable for offensive content published by others on the platform they manage, if they were aware of it and failed to remove it promptly.
The case dates back – given the pace of the justice system – to around ten years ago, when a journalist reported on a demonstration outside a certain police headquarters by migrants protesting that the reception centre where they were staying did not have access to the Sky television network. According to the little that can be gleaned from the grounds for the judgement, it appears that another journalist carried out an investigation into the same incident, concluding that the report was untrue or at least not sufficiently verified, and published this finding on his blog. This had led, amongst other things, to a number of comments from readers deemed to be defamatory.
Both the district court and the court of appeal had found the blogger guilty on the grounds that, although he was aware of these comments, he had only deleted them at the start of the trial at first instance.
The Court of Cassation upheld the decision on the merits, emphasising that ‘liability was established on the grounds of a failure by the blogger to carry out ex post monitoring, rather than a duty to carry out prior monitoring’. Citing precedents in more or less the same terms, the Court therefore reaffirmed its established position, according to which the operator of an online platform is liable for defamatory messages disseminated by others where it is proven that they knowingly and voluntarily contributed to their dissemination. This would be the case if, whilst aware of such content and its nature, they failed to remove it, as such inaction would amount to ‘knowing sharing of the harmful content’.
Such a stance – which, in truth, is not an isolated one – aims to (and ultimately does) hold those who provide the space to account, if only because they are often the easiest to identify, compared with the author of the message, who frequently manages to hide behind a veil of anonymity. On the one hand, the legislator has never required authors to reveal their identity – or at least to disclose it in the event of a dispute; on the other hand, investigators do not have sufficient resources to pursue every ‘anonymous’ poster, let alone private individuals.
