Aussie Court Rules Publishers Liable For Comments On Facebook Pages

The High Court in Australia has made a noteworthy ruling, making local media companies liable for the comments found on their Facebook pages.

Australia’s highest court ruled that the media firms are now responsible for the comments that Facebook users post under their articles.

This ruling could have widespread consequences for how Australian publishers interact with their readers on social media, and may result in many of them switching off comments.

Court ruling

The High Court of Australia on Wednesday dismissed an argument brought by three major news organisations, which argued they could not be held responsible for comments that people posted on their Facebook news pages.

The news outlets were appealing a lower court ruling, CNN reported.

“The appellants’ attempt to portray themselves as passive and unwitting victims of Facebook’s functionality has an air of unreality,” the court was quoted by CNN as writing. “Having taken action to secure the commercial benefit of the Facebook functionality, the appellants bear the legal consequences.”

The appeals court “was correct to hold that the acts of the appellants in facilitating, encouraging and thereby assisting the posting of comments by the third-party Facebook users rendered them publishers of those comments,” the High Court wrote.

The three local news organisations that had appealed the lower court ruling were Fairfax Media Publications, Nationwide News and Australian News Channel.

They had reportedly brought their case in response to a lawsuit filed by Dylan Voller, a former detainee in the Australian youth detention system.

CNN reported that Voller’s treatment at a detention centre made him the centre of a 2016 abuse scandal, and he later sued the three media companies because some of the public comments on their Facebook pages accused him of heinous crimes his attorney says he did not commit.

“It is commonly known that media companies encourage increased engagement on their posts so that their content is seen by a larger audience. This helps in attracting advertising revenue,” Voller’s lawyers, O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors, said in a statement.

“With this strong commercial imperative driving them there was no doubt that the media companies lent their assistance to the publication of third-party comments,” Voller’s lawyers said. “They did everything they could to encourage the same and it is disingenuous of them to say they played no role in publication of the same.”

Switching off comments

CNN reported that the High Court’s ruling on Wednesday does not resolve the underlying defamation case brought by Voller against the publishers, which now returns to the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

The ruling is likely to result in media firms either not posting their news articles on their Facebook pages.

However the more likely outcome is them simply refusing to allow people to post comments on their stories.

Facebook allows publishers to switch off comments on stories altogether.