Australian Court Rules Facebook Fanpage Managers Are Responsible For Various Comments In Their Posts

The Facebook Fanpage manager is responsible for netizen comments in posts on their page. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Australia's biggest news publishers including billionaire Rupert Murdoch's The Australian have been held responsible for comments readers posted on their company's Facebook page. This was decided by the country's High Court, on Wednesday, September 8.

The court rejected an appeal against an earlier ruling in favor of a defamation suit by Dylan Voller, a young man who has been the subject of several news reports about youth detention.

"This is a reasonable decision that conforms to the old law on publicity matters", Voller's attorney, Criminal and Civil Attorney O'Brien, said in a statement following the ruling.

Voller said that after stories referring to him were posted on the news company's Facebook page, a number of third-party Facebook users made defamatory comments and he accused the news outlet of being responsible for publishing stories on social media.

Voller filed a lawsuit against publishers, including Fairfax Media, publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, which is owned by broadcaster Nine, and others.

After the court ruled in Voller's favor, the media appealed on the grounds that they maintained a Facebook page where third parties published their own material. But the High Court rejected the appeal and ordered the organization to pay the fees.

"The actions of (media companies) in facilitating, encouraging and thereby assisting the posting of comments by third-party Facebook users make them publishers of those comments", Justice Rothman found.

At the time the comments were published, Facebook did not allow page moderators to turn off comments on posts, but has changed it.

The case will now return to the Supreme Court of New South Wales to determine if any of the comments defamed Voller.

A spokesperson for Nine said it was "disappointed with the result... as it will have consequences for what we may post on social media in the future".

Michael Miller, chief executive of News Corp Australia told the Sydney Morning Herald that the court's decision was important to anyone managing public social media pages.

"They can be held responsible for comments posted by others on the page even when they are not aware of the comments", he said.