Swiss court: Man guilty of libel over Facebook ‘likes’

GENEVA: In a landmark ruling, a Swiss court has fined a man for ‘ liking’ comments on Facebook accusing an animal rights activist of being a ‘ racist’ and an ‘antiSemite’.

In the first case of its kind in Switzerland, the Zurich district court on Monday faulted a 45year- old man for hitting the ‘Like’ button under what the judge deemed defamatory comments on the social media site.

According to a court statement sent to AFP on Tuesday, the defendant had accused Erwin Kessler and the animal protection group he heads, Verein gegen Tierfabriken (Against Animal Factories), of racism and antiSemitism in Facebook posts.

But the court also took issue with the man’s decision to hit the ‘ Like’ button under several comments from third parties about Kessler that were deemed inflammatory, and commented and linked to some of them.

The comments were made in 2015 during heated discussions on a range of Facebook groups about which animal welfare groups should be permitted to take part in a large vegan street festival, Swiss daily Tages Anzeiger reported.

Kessler has sued more than a dozen people who took part in those exchanges, a lawyer for one of the defendants, Amr Abdelaziz, told AFP.

Several people have already been convicted in the case, mainly for specific comments they made, but it appears the man convicted Monday was the first to be sanctioned merely for ‘ liking’ comments made by others.

In its statement, the court said it did not matter that the comments had not originated from the defendant, whose name was not given. — AFP