29/09/2023, 12:35 SANCHEZ v. FRANCE - 45581/15 (Judgment : No Article 10 - Freedom of expression-{general} : Grand Chamber) [2023] ECHR 418 (1… this reason the possibility for individuals complaining of defamatory or other types of unlawful speech to bring an action to establish liability must, in principle, be maintained, to constitute an effective remedy for the alleged violations (see, mutatis mutandis, Delfi AS, cited above, § 110). 185. The Court observes that, at the relevant time, the holder of a Facebook account used for non-commercial purposes was not fully able to control the administration of comments. In addition to the fact that there was no automatic filtering process available - although it had been possible to remove public access (see paragraphs 82 and 106 above) - the effective monitoring of all comments, especially in the case of a very popular account, would have required availability or recourse to significant, if not considerable, resources. Nevertheless, to exempt producers from all liability might facilitate or encourage abuse and misuse, including hate speech and calls to violence, but also manipulation, lies and misinformation. In the Court’s view, while professional entities which create social networks and make them available to other users necessarily have certain obligations (see, in particular, paragraph 75 above), there should be a sharing of liability between all the actors involved, allowing if necessary for the degree of liability and the manner of its attribution to be graduated according to the objective situation of each one. 186. The Court further notes that French law is consistent with such a view, providing in the case of the “producer” for a shared liability subject to the conditions of the last paragraph of section 93-3 of the Law no. 82652 of 29 July 1982, while in the case of hosts within the meaning of the Law of 21 June 2004 - Facebook being one example - liability remains limited, as confirmed by the Constitutional Council in its decision no. 2004-496 DC of 10 June 2004 (see paragraph 45 above). 187. Moreover, the domestic courts in the present case referred to the applicant’s status as a politician and inferred from this that a special obligation was incumbent upon him (see paragraphs 28 and 26 above). It is certainly true that, in general, a politician has duties and responsibilities (see the case-law summarised in paragraphs 150-151 and 153 above), in addition to the fact that a degree of notoriety and representativeness necessarily lend a certain resonance and authority to the person’s words or deeds. Owing to a politician’s particular status and position in society, he or she is more likely to influence voters, or even to incite them, directly or indirectly, to adopt positions and conduct that may prove unlawful, thus explaining why he or she can be expected to be “all the more vigilant”, to use the words of the Nîmes Court of Appeal (see paragraph 26 above). https://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2023/418.html 71/100