The NSW Court of Appeals has upheld a decision holding media companies liable for allegedly defamatory comments made on their Facebook pages, a decision that could impact how media companies use social media platforms to build an audience.
Three media companies, Fairfax Media, now Nine, Nationwide News and Australian News Channel, faced defamation proceedings launched by Dylan Voller, who was at the centre of the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre scandal, over a series of comments made about him under links to stories on the media companies’ Facebook pages.
In June last year, the Supreme Court ruled the media companies could be considered publishers of the third-part comments, saying they had the ability to monitor or hide comments until they were approved. Today, the media companies lost an appeal against the ruling.
“They facilitated the posting of comments on articles published in their newspapers and had sufficient control over the platform to be able to delete postings when they became aware that they were defamatory,” judge John Basten said in the ruling today.
The wide-ranging implications of the decision on media companies led to three other publishers Bauer, Seven West Media and the Daily Mail Australia, who were not part of the proceedings, to intervene in the appeal in an attempt to have the decision overturned.
Following the decision last year, the Australian government said it would look at a major overhaul to defamation laws, the first in the country since the emergence of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
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