Linked: Australian court rules media are liable for comments made on their Facebook pages

Well this is disturbing. If you run a Facebook page, are you responsible for the comments people post? Australia seems to think you are.

““A person who participates in and is instrumental in bringing about the publication of defamatory matter is potentially liable for having done so notwithstanding that others may have participated in that publication in different degrees,” said the ruling. “In this case, the applicants maintained Facebook pages and encouraged and facilitated the making of comments by third parties which when posted on the page were made available to Facebook users generally and were therefore publishers of the comments.””

If this idea spreads, soon no one will have a Facebook page, because as a page owner, I actually have no ability to turn off comments. So what can I do?

That wouldn’t bode well for social media, or for commenting sections anywhere.

Australian court rules media are liable for comments made on their Facebook pages

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