A recent judgment of the Court of Cassation decreed how the insults relating to a person and broadcast on WhatsApp through the States constitute a real defamation against the subject. The sentence condemned the accused in the case in question to pay a fine of 3,000 euros.
Social networks and messaging platforms are virtual places where many feel free to express themselves without consequences, but this is not always the case. As evidenced by a recent judgment of the Court of Cassation, which decreed how the insults relating to a person and broadcast on WhatsApp through the state function constitute a real defamation against said person. The sentence condemned the accused in the case in question to pay a fine of 3,000 euros.
The accused had written offensive sentences on WhatsApp and damaging the reputation of an acquaintance, not just sending them in a chat but posting them as a status. The particular function of the messaging app is similar to that of Instagram Stories: it keeps published content visible for 24 hours and within reach of a much larger audience than a single chat or conversation. of group. If confidentiality is set to zero, the State is theoretically visible to anyone who decides to add the sender’s phone number to their address book; if privacy protections are enabled, the Status is always available to anyone the sender has in their WhatsApp number list.
For the man, the woman’s contacts may not have installed the messaging app – essentially ubiquitous and with over 2 billion users worldwide; for the judges, on the other hand, a direct message would have been sufficient to provide details on the dissemination of the remarks addressed to the single victim. In short, the public nature of the content sent online is one of the aspects which led the Supreme Court to condemn no. 33219/2021, in which the sentence handed down against the accused by the Caltanissetta Court of Appeal, which was handling the case, is confirmed.
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