The High Court’s ruling on Wednesday is just a small part of a larger case brought against Australian news outlets, including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Australian, among others, by a man who said he was defamed in the Facebook comments of the newspapers’ stories in 2016.
The question before the High Court was the definition of “publisher,” something that isn’t easily defined in Australian law.
From Australia’s ABC News:
The court found that, by creating a public Facebook page and posting content, the outlets had facilitated, encouraged and thereby assisted the publication of comments from third-party Facebook users, and they were, therefore, publishers of those comments.
The Aboriginal-Australian man who brought the lawsuit, Dylan Voller, was a detainee at a children’s detention facility in the Northern Territory in 2015 when undercover video of kids being physically abused was captured and broadcast in 2016. Voller was shown shirtless with a hood over his head and restraints around his arms. His neck was even tied to the back of the chair.
Facebook commenters at the time made false allegations that Voller had attacked a Salvation Army officer, leaving the man blind in one eye.
[…]
Voller never asked for the Facebook comments to be taken down, according to the media companies, something that was previously required for the news outlets to be held criminally liable for another user’s content in Australia. Facebook comments couldn’t be turned off completely in 2016, a feature that was added just this year.
Wednesday’s ruling did not determine whether the Facebook comments were defamatory and Voller’s full case against the media companies can now go forward to the High Court. Nine News, one of the companies being sued, released a statement to ABC News saying they were “obviously disappointed” in today’s ruling.
[…]
Source: Australia: Facebook Users Liable for Comments Under Their Posts
So if Facebook is responsible for stuff published on their platform then shouldn’t they be resposible for the comments too?
Robin Edgar
Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft