This appeared last week:
Any Facebook account ‘open to defamation’
12:00AM July 6, 2019
Anyone who has a social media account with a comments section — be it a blog, Facebook or YouTube channel — should regard themselves as fair game for a defamation action in Australia, a media law expert has warned.
The warning follows a world-first judgment by the NSW Supreme Court that media companies were liable for any defamatory comments made by third parties on their Facebook pages, even if they didn’t know the offending comments were there.
Peter Barnett, a partner with the country’s largest law firm, Minter Ellison, said he believed the public did not understand the implications of the ruling last month. “It applies well beyond the media, whether it’s individuals or small businesses or one of Australia’s largest companies,” said Mr Barnett, who acts for Nine newspapers.
“If they have a website and someone posts a potentially defamatory comment on their site — even though they didn’t write it, they didn’t see the post — they can still be sued.”
The decision is a preliminary ruling in a defamation action launched by a former inmate of the Northern Territory Don Dale youth detention centre, Dylan Voller, who is suing three media companies over 10 anonymous and potentially defamatory posts made about him between 2016 and 2017 in the Facebook comments section of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the Centralian Advocate, Sky News Australia and The Bolt Report.
News Corp Australia, the publisher of The Australian, slammed the decision as “ridiculous” and “far out of step” with other English democracies where media companies have the defence of “innocent dissemination” if an offensive comment has been posted without their knowledge.
Judge Stephen Rothman found while the law was in “uncharted territory” dealing with digital media, the media outlets ran the public Facebook pages for their “own commercial ends” and by doing so had assumed the risk.
He also concluded the media companies had the power to hide the comments on Facebook.
More here:
Somehow I feel I find myself, in a small way, in sympathy with all those resisting the various attempts to shut down open discussion and free speech.
While things will stay the same for now I will have a lower threshold for responding to solicitors letters and the like by taking stuff down!
Please tell the truth in oblique ways, if need, be to avoid defaming people and getting me in strife!
David.
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