Court of Cassation: the criteria for bloggers' liability for defamatory comments by third parties have been set.

The Court of Cassation, with judgment no. 17360 of 2025, has dealt in a timely manner with the issue of the civil liability of the manager of a blog for defamatory content inserted by third parties in the comments, clarifying a long-disputed area of the discipline of liability in digital communication.

The Court reiterated that the blogger is not required to carry out a preventive check on the comments published by users, but becomes liable if, following a specific and detailed report, even if not coming from a public authority, he does not promptly remove them where they are manifestly illegal.

The story originates from abusive comments addressed to a local politician and published on the defendant's blog. Despite the request for removal by the offended person, the contents remained online for weeks, aggravating the harmful exposure. The claims for damages were rejected in the first and second instance (Court of Siena and Court of Appeal of Florence), with the latter considering the operator's obligation to activate subject exclusively to a communication from the competent authorities.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, affirmed that this interpretation is not reflected either in the literal tenor or in the rationale of Legislative Decree no. 70/2003, implementing Directive 2000/31/EC. The discipline, in particular art. 16 and 17, excludes a general obligation of surveillance on the part of the information society service provider, but identifies a duty of ex post activation when he becomes aware of the manifest illegality of content. The report coming from the data subject, when clear and detailed, is suitable for giving rise to such knowledge and therefore the obligation to remove it. In this sense, the blogger, although not able to be equated with a professional provider, is not neutral with respect to the content he hosts, having the full technical and material possibility to intervene. The failure to remove, therefore, integrates a form of conscious acquiescence, a source of autonomous Aquilian responsibility.

The Court therefore overturned the decision of the Court of Appeal of Florence, which had been in contrast with consolidated precedents (Cass. civ., sec. I, no. 7708/2019; Cass. civ., sec. III, ord. no. 24818/2023; Cass. pen., no. 12546/2019), and reaffirmed the principle that the removal obligation arises at the very moment in which the operator acquires awareness of the manifest illegality, regardless of the origin of the report. The authority's communication represents a qualified source of knowledge, but not the only one, any unequivocal information that puts the operator in a position to perceive the illegal nature of the content being sufficient.

The decision has a systemic importance: it reaffirms the balance between freedom of expression of thought (art. 21 of the Constitution) and protection of reputation, giving prominence to the active role that managers of interactive digital spaces, including non-professional ones, are called upon to assume. This outlines a model of responsibility which, while not imposing generalized preventive controls, requires timely and targeted intervention when unequivocal elements of illegality emerge. The ruling is also in conceptual continuity with the jurisprudence on the right to be forgotten, since in both cases what is intended to be avoided is the online persistence of harmful content despite a qualified report.

Judgment no. 17360/2025 therefore helps to clarify the "gray area" relating to the obligations of the managers of blogs and participatory spaces, strengthening an orientation that aims to make those who administer digital environments responsible, even if they are not attributable to large platforms or professional operators, with possible future implications both on the jurisprudential and regulatory side.