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from the glad-we-are-not-hosted-down-under dept.
CNN shut down its Facebook page in Australia after court liability ruling:
CNN shut down its Facebook page in Australia on Wednesday, after an Australian court ruled that media outlets are liable for defamatory user-generated comments.
[...] The deteriorating effects of the court's ruling on online speech in Australia serve as a warning of what's to come if U.S. lawmakers succeed in their efforts to weakening protections against such legal decisions in the United States.
[...] The court's ruling previews the grim future in store if U.S. politicians get their way and dismantle Section 230, the keystone U.S. law that shields websites from liability over user-generated content. Without it, social media platforms and any other website with user-generated content—especially those without Facebook's deep pockets—would likely die. Both Republicans and Democrats, President Joe Biden included, would like it dismantled.
Should the person doing the defaming be liable, or the owner of the page the defamation is posted on be liable?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @07:46PM
No, SN shouldn't be liable. For one, it's a massive stretch to treat APK's threats as anything resembling being credible. He's a chickenshit who thinks he can intimidate everyone with his words, while hiding behind his keyboard. But everyone knows he's too inept to carry out any threats that go beyond online harassment and intimidation. Next time he decides to spread misinformation about COVID and vaccines, perhaps I'll finally create an account and correct all of his misinformation. No doubt it will enrage him enough to follow me around for a month or two on SN and cause him to hold a grudge for decades. But the last thing I'd do is actually take APK's threats seriously.
Also, it's important to distinguish between what's technically feasible versus what is practical to do. Virtually every site has the technical capability to delete content. SN could certainly modify the database to remove comments or edit them to remove their content. There certainly could be times they might need to remove or edit comments, like if a particular comment is causing pages to render improperly. In the past, there were bugs in Slash that would allow comments to contain text that would break the rendering of pages, execute Javascript, or display images. It is certainly plausible that SN might want to delete such comments, then fix the vulnerabilities that allow those comments to be posted. However, the ability to do this and the occasional use doesn't mean it's practical for SN's staff to go through and examine every comment on the site to check if it merits being edited or deleted.