The broadcaster said it had to “substantially increase its investment in social media moderation, in particular for news and current affairs content”. SBS told the parliament news media businesses “are subject to significant legal risk regarding user-generated content, including comments on social media posts, which means the ability to manage these features is increasingly important. The ABC told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in its submission to the draft legislation that without comment moderation tools “news media organisations may be forced to withdraw from the use of some of these products and/or increase moderation resourcing in order to mitigate legal risks incurred as a result of being on the platform”. The exposure draft for the legislation contained a section requiring the platforms like Facebook to allow for news businesses to moderate comments, but this was removed from the legislation when it was introduced into parliament. Media companies had sought this change from Facebook as part of the Australian government’s news media bargaining code legislation, which passed the parliament last month.
Since then, media companies have been advised to deploy significant resources into moderating comments or refrain from posting articles that were likely to attract potentially defamatory comments in response. The New South Wales supreme court ruled in 2019 that several Australian media companies were liable for defamatory comments posted by users on their Facebook pages in response to news articles.ĭylan Voller, whose mistreatment in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth detention centre led to a royal commission, had sued the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Centralian Advocate, Sky News Australia and The Bolt Report over 10 comments on their Facebook pages in response to news articles about him between 20.Īn appeal of the ruling was upheld last year, with the court finding media outlets had “sufficient control” over deleting postings when they became aware they were defamatory. While it will mean every Facebook user will have more control over what is posted on their profiles, the impact will be most felt among media organisations and other high-profile public pages that have struggled to moderate comments on Facebook posts on their pages.
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