September 8, 2021 — 9.05pm
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Throughout its almost 170-year history, The Age has faced having to defend in court articles we publish in our newspapers. In modern times, the same has also applied to our websites. However, a judgment by the High Court on Tuesday has made clear we can also be liable for things we had no role in writing, editing or putting into the public sphere.
The court found that several news outlets should be considered the publishers of allegedly defamatory comments that were added by third parties to Facebook posts about former Northern Territory youth detainee Dylan Voller.
At the time the comments were made, Facebook did not enable operators of public pages to switch them off. The NSW Supreme Court suggested in 2019 instead that we use the “keyword filter”, blocking out comments using common words such as “and”, “the” and “she”, then reinstating only those that were not offensive – an impossibly onerous task.
In response to that judgment, the only choice The Age felt it had was to vacate the field, leaving contentious articles that were clearly in the public interest off Facebook entirely because of the risk that they would attract defamatory comments. The effect was to leave the social media platforms, already derided for a lack of quality information, even more at the mercy of the misinformation squad – the QAnon types, the Russian bots and the ivermectin merchants – or anybody else...
Read Full Story: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/high-court-dims-public-debate-with-its-judgment-on-social-media-20210908-p58pzi.html
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