Hyperlinks – what does the Dale Vince case tell us?
18/03/2025
We all know the well-established principles of libel which have been developed through both statute and caselaw, and that whilst their application to traditional print publications can be tricky enough, it can be a whole lot more complex when you throw in online publications, tweets and hyperlinks. The recent case of Dale Vince v Staines & Tice, is a casing point.
Firstly, here’s the basic background.
Dale Vince, the founder of Ecotricity, gave an interview to The Times in October 2023 in which he was asked about the terrorist attack in Israel on 7th October 2023. In the interview Mr Vince stated “I think one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, right. That’s how it works”.
This comment was then reported on by Guido Fawkes (whose Editor is Paul Staines, the first Defendant), under the headline “Multi-million pound donor to Labour says Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’” on 13th March 2024. The article compared Mr Vince’s comment to the words allegedly spoken by Conservative donor Frank Hester about Dianne Abbott, and asked when the public can expect Kier Starmer to announce that the £2.5 million donated to Labour by Mr Vince would be returned.
An article published by Guido Fawkes the following day contained a statement from prominent Jewish MP Andrew Percy, which included the quote: “Surely the Labour Party won’t want to take a penny from anyone who thinks genocidal terrorist murderers and rapists are freedom fighters”.
Mr Tice, then the leader of the political party, Reform UK (and the second Defendant in the proceedings), Tweeted the first article by Guido Fawkes on social media platform X, with the words: “So major Labour donor is pro the murderous antisemitic Hamas….Mmmm”.
Mr Vince denies that he is a supporter of Hamas and states that his comment has been taken out of context and distorted. He therefore brought proceedings against both Mr Staines and Mr Tice in relation to their publications, and a trial of preliminary issues was ordered to rule on:
a. the meaning of the words complained of;
b. whether the words complained of were statements of fact or expressions of opinion;
c. where the statements were opinion, whether they indicated the basis of the opinion in general or specific terms; and
d. whether the imputations were defamatory of Mr Vince at common law.
The judgment is a twenty-two page whistle stop tour of the law relating to the above and is very much worth a read. The headline outcomes, in very simple terms are that:
- All of the meanings found were defamatory of Mr Vince at common law;
- The articles published by Guido Fawkes were statements of fact; and
- The Tweet published by Mr Tice was an expression of opinion which indicated that its basis was the Guido Fawkes publication.
As a result, in the days since the ruling was published Mr Staines has reached a “commercial” settlement with Mr Vince in relation to the Guido Fawkes publications, which will involve paying both damages and costs. The case against Mr Tice continues.
However, the focus of this column is one very specific area which we are frequently asked about, and which doesn’t have a definitive answer: is a tweet which retweets a link to another publication a standalone publication, or does its ‘meaning’ need to be judged in the context of the article to which it links?
Spoiler alert: this judgment still doesn’t give a definitive answer, but the points it covers are very much worth noting and considering when publishers write social media posts to publish along with links to their articles.
In the end, Mr Justice Pepperall didn’t have to decide the point because Mr Tice conceded that the tweet referenced Mr Vince whether it was read in isolation or in tandem with the hyperlinked article. In addition Pepperall, J. ruled that the meaning of the tweet was the same whether the hyperlinked material was considered or not.
However, that isn’t always the case – so how does the court decide whether the tweet and hyperlinked material are to be considered separately or together as a single publication?
The starting point, which is well established, is that the reasonable reader will read the whole of a publication, rather than just cherry pick the headline or a particularly strong paragraph, when deciding what it means.
But how does that translate into the world of the internet and social media?
The approach taken by the Courts to date is that material on X, but which is external to the tweet in question, can be taken into consideration if “it is sufficiently closely connected in time, content or otherwise that it is likely to have been in the hypothetical reader’s view, or in their mind, at the time they read the words complained of”.
In relation to hyperlinks, the Courts are unlikely to be willing to assume that all hyperlinks within an article have been clicked on by a reasonable reader, but in the case of a single tweet containing a statement like “ABC is a liar” with a single hyperlink “it is almost an irresistible inference to conclude that the ordinary reasonable reader would have to follow the hyperlink in order to make sense of what was being said” (to quote from the judgment in a case decided in 2018).
And as was stated in the judgment in the 2017 Katie Hopkins case :“everything depends upon the context in which material is presented to the reader”. The same judgment went on to state that:
“…ultimately….the court is going to have to take a view as to what hypothetical reasonable reader is likely to do when presented by an online publication and the extent to which s/he would follow hyperlinks presented to him/her.”
So, the answer is: it all depends on the context.
But, if you intend for a publication to be read in conjunction with a hyperlink or another tweet, the clearer you can make that to the reader, the better.