29/09/2023, 12:35 SANCHEZ v. FRANCE - 45581/15 (Judgment : No Article 10 - Freedom of expression-{general} : Grand Chamber) [2023] ECHR 418 (1… politician campaigning in the run-up to an election but also a professional in matters of online communication strategy (see paragraph 13 above). 194. In addition, the Court would point out that the use of Facebook was subject to the acceptance of certain terms and conditions laid down by the social network, in particular those in the “Statement of rights and responsibilities”, of which the applicant must have been aware (see paragraph 81 above). It further notes that while each Facebook user must individually ensure compliance with the operating rules, the applicant nevertheless saw fit to draw the attention of his “friends” to the need to ensure that their remarks remained lawful, as he posted a message asking them to “be careful with the content of [their] comments” (see paragraph 19 above), thus apparently showing that he was at least aware of the issues raised by some of the comments on his “wall”. The Grand Chamber in fact agrees with the Chamber’s finding that the applicant had posted this warning message without deleting the impugned comments and, above all, without having taken the trouble to check, or to have checked, the content of comments that were then publicly accessible (see paragraph 97 of the Chamber judgment). The lack of such minimal verification appears all the more difficult to explain as, the very next day, the applicant had been informed by S.B. of his confrontation with Leila T. (see paragraph 22 above) and had thus definitely been made aware of the problems that might be caused by the other comments. 195. Turning more specifically to the impugned comments, the Court agrees with the analysis by the Chamber concerning that of S.B. when it found that it had been “promptly withdrawn by its author, less than twenty-four hours after being posted [and that], [a]ccordingly, assuming that the applicant had indeed had the time and opportunity to see this comment before its deletion, ... to require him to have acted even more promptly, bearing in mind that the domestic authorities [had been] unable to show the existence of such an obligation in the light of the particular circumstances of the case, would amount to requiring excessive and impracticable responsiveness”. 196. S.B.’s comment, however, is only one of the elements to be taken into consideration in the present case in an examination of all the acts held against the applicant by the domestic authorities. The applicant was in fact prosecuted, and ultimately convicted, not on account of the remarks made by S.B. or L.R., but for failing to proceed with the prompt deletion of all the unlawful comments posted by those authors on his Facebook “wall”. Moreover, those comments did not merely follow on from one another chronologically. Far from being just a “system of interactive monologues” as suggested by the applicant (see paragraph 96 above), they were responding to and complementing each other following https://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2023/418.html 74/100