Media Liable for Comments Posted on Their Facebook Pages: Australian High Court

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In a landmark decision, Australiaโ€™s apex judicial body, the High Court, has dismissed an appeal from major media outlets claiming they were not responsible for comments posted by readers or audience members on their social media pages.

Experts believe the judgement will have wider ramifications across not just media outlets but businesses, government entities, and community organisations, who will have to moderate comments even more stringentlyโ€”or remove the option altogetherโ€”to ensure defamatory comments are not publicised.

The case in question revolved around Dylan Voller, a former inmate at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

Voller sued the publishers of news outlets The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and Sky News Australia over comments posted by individuals on theirย Facebookย pages in 2016 and 2017.

While the news stories posted online were not defamatory, Vollerโ€™s lawyers argued that the comments featured in the posts were defamatory and that the media companies were legally liable.

An initial case was heard in 2019 by the Supreme Court of New South Wales (NSW), who found it in Vollerโ€™s favour. In 2020, the NSW Court of Appeal again ruled in Vollerโ€™s favour agreeing that the media outlets were the โ€œpublishers.โ€

The media companies appealed once more to the High Court of Australiaโ€”the final appellate body in the countryโ€”which found in favour of Voller with a five to two majority.

The news companyโ€™s lawyers had argued that they were not instrumental toโ€”or were participants inโ€”the allegedly defamatory third-party comments.

However, the court disagreed and found that in creating a Facebook page and posting content, the news outlets facilitated, encouraged, and therefore, assisted in the publication of comments, meaning they should be deemed the publishers.

The High Court also found that it did not matter that the comments function in Facebook could not be disabled at the time.

Byย Daniel Y. Teng

Read Full Article on TheEpochTimes.com

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