Case Study - SLAPP in Slovakia

This is the Slovak-language version of this case study; this English-language version may be found here.

The Konšpirátori.sk project was established in 2016 with the primary goal of protecting advertisers from having their ads appear on disinformation sites. The Konšpirátori.sk project has created a list of websites that, in the opinion of the members of the independent evaluation committee, carry deceptive, fraudulent, conspiratorial or propagandistic content. Nowhere does the project state that the 250 Czech and Slovak websites currently in its database disseminate illegal content or carry out illegal activities.

The project is supported by dozens of advertising and media agencies, and the founders of the project, who work in the field of Internet marketing, come from their ranks. Their primary motive for founding the Konšpirátori.sk project was to protect the reputation of their clients, whose advertisements were also published on websites with dubious content.

Several lawsuits have been filed against konspiratori.sk by the operators of listed websites.

The applicant featured in this case study is a legal entity which operates the internet news portal www.hlavnespravy.sk. That portal is generally perceived in the Slovak Republic as one of the most widely read disinformation (conspiracy) news portals. The articles published on this portal are often written in such a way as to artificially portray the pro-Western world in a negative light. On the contrary, the portal exaggerates and often contradicts the state of objective reality by adoring the Russian Federation, its political representatives or the country's activities in relation to foreign countries. Recently, information has been published on several occasions about the portal's links to the convicted mafioso Marian Kočner and to Russian intelligence agencies, when the portal's correspondent personally accepted money from an employee of the Russian embassy in the Slovak Republic at a monitored meeting.