Supreme Court of Cassation: blogger’s liability for defamatory comments posted by third parties

The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, with judgment no. 17360 of 2025, addressed in detail the issue of civil liability of a blog manager for defamatory comments posted by third parties, clarifying a long-debated area of liability in the digital communication environment. The Court reiterated that a blogger is not required to carry out preventive monitoring of user comments, but becomes liable when, following a specific and substantiated notice—even if not issued by a public authority—he fails to promptly remove manifestly unlawful content.

The case originated from offensive comments directed at a local politician and published on the defendant’s blog. Despite a removal request submitted by the injured party, the content remained online for several weeks, aggravating the reputational harm. Both the Court of Siena and the Court of Appeal of Florence dismissed the claims, with the latter holding that the manager’s duty to act could only arise upon a notification from the competent authorities.

The Supreme Court, however, stated that such an interpretation finds no basis in either the literal wording or the ratio of Legislative Decree no. 70/2003, which implements Directive 2000/31/EC. Under that framework, particularly Articles 16 and 17, service providers are not subject to a general obligation of prior monitoring, but they do incur a duty to act ex post as soon as they become aware of the manifest unlawfulness of the content. A notification from the affected individual, when sufficiently clear and substantiated, is capable of triggering such awareness and, consequently, the obligation to remove the content. In this respect, although a blogger cannot be equated with a professional hosting provider, he cannot be considered entirely neutral with respect to the content he hosts, since he has full technical and material control over the platform. Failure to remove, therefore, constitutes a form of conscious acquiescence, giving rise to autonomous tort liability.

The Court thus quashed the decision of the Court of Appeal of Florence, which had diverged from established case law (Supreme Court, Civil Division I, judgment no. 7708/2019; Civil Division III, order no. 24818/2023; Criminal Division, judgment no. 12546/2019). It reaffirmed the principle that the obligation to remove arises the very moment the manager becomes aware of the manifest unlawfulness, irrespective of the source of the notification. Communication from the competent authority is a qualified means of establishing such awareness, but not the only one, since any unequivocal information sufficient to alert the manager to the unlawful nature of the content is adequate.

The decision is of systemic importance: it reaffirms the balance between freedom of expression (Article 21 of the Italian Constitution) and the protection of reputation, assigning an active role to managers of interactive digital spaces, even where such spaces are not operated on a professional or commercial basis. This outlines a liability model that, while not imposing a generalized duty of preventive monitoring, requires a timely and targeted intervention once unequivocal indications of unlawfulness emerge. The ruling also shows conceptual continuity with the case law on the right to be forgotten, as both contexts concern the unjustified persistence of harmful online content despite a qualified notice.

Judgment no. 17360/2025 therefore provides important clarification on the “grey area” of bloggers’ and online forum managers’ duties, reinforcing an approach aimed at strengthening the accountability of those who administer digital environments—even if not falling within the scope of large platforms or professional operators—with potential implications both for future case law and for legislative developments