SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A Supreme Court judge in New South Wales, Australia, has just made a ruling that media organizations are liable for allegedly defamatory comments posted on their public Facebook pages.
Articles in The Conversation and elsewhere discuss the ruling, suggesting that operators of commercial Facebook pages may need to hide all comments by default so that they can be checked for defamation before they are seen by the public.
The problem is that Facebook was not designed for users to pre-moderate comments. It was built to deliver us “frictionless”, immediate communication.
Dylan Voller, a Former Northern Territory youth detainee sued three media organizations, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and the Centralian Advocate. Voller claims that comments on 10 Facebook posts published in 2016 and 2017 in the Facebook pages of the three media outlets carry a series of false and defamatory imputations against him.
Although he did not ask for the comments to be taken down, Voller launched defamation proceedings against the three media organisazions in the Supreme Court. His argument is that the media organizations published the comments of third parties.
A preliminary decision was issued by Justice Stephen Rothman stating that Mr. Voller has proven the alleged publication of the comments by the media organizations. As such, he ordered the media organizations to pay Mr. Voller the costs of the hearing. The court has not decided yet whether the comments are indeed defamatory.
This means that comments by members of the public on articles posted to public social media pages of media companies are now the responsibility of the media companies - who can be sued for defamation.
Note, Australia has no 'free speech', except by tradition (the fundamental difference between the U.S and places such as Australia and the UK are the fact that the US decided to write its laws down - whereas Australia and the UK use the the Westminster system of government, where
courts have ability to address silence or ambiguity in the statutory law through the development of common law.
SN could be held liable for defamatory comments!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @05:11PM
it doesn't have to be non commercial, just stop registering your private enterprise with the government and stop funding them. then save your tax money for your defense, in whatever way you see fit.