Spanish judge calls for end to anonymity on social media in hate crimes | Spain

A Spanish judge has sparked a wave of disinformation online following the murder of an 11-year-old boy, calling for an end to anonymity on social media.

Miguel Ángel Aguilar, a judge in the court responsible for hate crimes and discrimination, wants to oblige platforms to reveal the true identities of their users when hate crimes are suspected so that the law can impose digital contact bans.

The move follows the murder of a boy last Sunday in a village near Toledo in central Spain. He was playing football with friends when a man, his face covered by a scarf, ran onto the field and stabbed him multiple times.

Echoing the disinformation that circulated following the murder of three young girls in Southport, northern England, last month, social media posts appeared almost immediately falsely linking the attack to immigration and, in particular, so-called meansunaccompanied minors, most of them from North Africa.

The police have now arrested a 20-year-old Spaniard. He was visiting his father in the village and is believed to be suffering from mental health problems.

Aguilar said in a television interview on Wednesday that those spreading hate speech must be identified and that social media platforms should be forced to reveal their true identities if the judiciary so requests.

“Creating a climate of stigma through social media can lead to street violence,” he said. “When a crime is committed on social media, we need to be able to identify the source.”

“It would be interesting to see how people behave on social media when they know they can be identified, and especially when the justice system wants to know who they are.”

Aguilar points to a 2019 case when a YouTuber in Barcelona was sentenced to 15 months in prison for posting a humiliating video of a homeless man and ordered to pay the victim €20,000 (£17,000).

The perpetrator was banned from using YouTube in a kind of digital contact ban.

“This is a precedent,” said Aguilar. “Now it's important that it becomes law.”

Spain passed a comprehensive anti-discrimination law in 2022, but Aguilar acknowledged that it was difficult to define when hate speech was a crime. “No two cases are the same and not all hatred is a crime, even if we find it abhorrent,” he said.

Aguilar was the first judge in Spain to obtain a conviction for spreading false news, after a man who posted on X a video allegedly showing underage migrants beating someone in Canet de Mar, near Barcelona, ​​was sentenced to 15 months in prison. The video was shot in China.

In Spain, as elsewhere, the issue is one of freedom of expression. Media companies claim that user verification would encourage people to self-censor and further restrict the freedom of expression of those living under repressive regimes.

Spain joins a long list of countries grappling with the issue of online anonymity, and while Aguilar's proposal is likely to have cross-party support, it is unlikely to be enacted into law any time soon.