ZÖCHLING v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT In the case of Zöchling v. Austria, The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: Faris Vehabović, President, Iulia Antoanella Motoc, Branko Lubarda, judges, and Veronika Kotek, Acting Deputy Section Registrar, Having regard to: the application (no. 4222/18) against the Republic of Austria lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 18 January 2018 by an Austrian national, Ms Christa Zöchling (“the applicant”), who was born in 1959 and lives in Vienna and who was represented by Mr H. Simon, a lawyer practising in Vienna; the decision to give notice of the application to the Austrian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ambassador H. Tichy, Head of the International Law Department at the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs; the parties’ observations; Having deliberated in private on 27 June 2023, Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date: SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE 1. The case concerns a complaint under Article 8 § 1 of the Convention about the refusal to hold the publisher of an Internet news portal liable for hate speech in users’ comments. 2. The applicant is a journalist working for a well-known weekly news magazine. 3. Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH (“the company”) is the publisher of an Internet news portal (“the portal”) where on average six to ten articles a day are published by journalists who work on a voluntary basis. The portal allows users registered with an email address to post comments relating to articles published by the company without the content of the comments being checked before or after their publication. Users are given notice that unlawful comments are undesirable (nicht erwünscht). The comments are technically cleared for publication by an employee and are visible on the portal under the relevant article. 4. On 11 September 2016 the company published an article about the applicant on the portal along with an image of her. On 12 September 2016 a user posted that he had printed out the applicant’s image and had successfully shot her in the face and encouraged others to do the same. Another user posted a comment calling the applicant a “plague”, a “dumb person” and a “larva” and stated that he regretted that gas chambers no longer existed. 1