Sentenced by court for 'fake likes'

A man in Switzerland has been found guilty after clicking the "like" button on Facebook on defamatory content.

Facebook application - Photo: AFP

In 2015, a huge debate broke out on social media in Switzerland over whether animal welfare groups should be allowed to participate in a vegan street festival, according to the Tages Anzeiger daily.

The controversy has led to many extreme and hateful comments directed at Erwin Kessler, head of the organization Verein gegen Tierfabriken (Against Animal Factories), who claim that Kessler is racist and anti-Semitic.

According to AFP, Mr. Kessler later sued more than a dozen people who were involved in the offensive comments. Several of them were convicted, mostly for offensive comments.

In the trial on May 29, another person was convicted just for… clicking like.

Accordingly, the court in Zurich said that a 45-year-old man (identity withheld) was convicted of clicking “like” on some content that offended Mr. Kessler, as well as making some comments related to those offensive comments.

The court said it did not matter whether the comments were made by the defendant or not, but by clicking “like”, “the defendant clearly supported the inappropriate content and made it his own opinion”, AFP news agency quoted the court statement on May 30.

This is the first case in the world to be convicted in court just for… clicking like, according to AFP.

In fact, nearly twenty years ago, Mr. Kessler was convicted of violating Swiss anti-racism laws, after comparing Jewish animal slaughter methods to Nazi practices.

However, Kessler has already served a short prison sentence in that case. So those who bring up the past and accuse Mr. Kessler of anti-Semitism, racism, etc. are seen as damaging Mr. Kessler's reputation.

In the case of the man who “liked” the above, the Zurich District Court determined that the defendant could not prove that the comments he “liked” were legitimate. Therefore, clicking the “like” button on the false content caused the insult to spread to other people in the defendant’s Facebook friends list, and “thereby made the offensive content accessible to a large number of other people,” the court statement asserted.

The man was fined 4,000 Swiss francs (more than 90 million VND). The defendant's lawyer, Mr. Amr Abdelaziz, said the court's decision would set a dangerous precedent.

“If the courts wanted to prosecute people for clicking ‘likes,’ we would have to triple the number of judges in this country,” he said. “That would easily be a decision that would infringe on freedom of speech.”

According to Tuoi Tre