Social Moderation – Are you covered?

A recent NSW Supreme Court ruling has thrown social media moderation into the spotlight.

Defamation and Facebook Comments

On June 24th, 2019 a defamation case pursued by Dylan Voller came to a close. The New South Wales Supreme Court ruled that “…media organisations are liable for allegedly defamatory comments made by third parties on their public Facebook pages..“. While this ruling is likely to be appealed it’s result is stark: regardless of the content that is published, if someone makes an alleged defamatory comment, the page owner is liable. Not the commenter. Not Facebook.

What does this mean for you?

There are major repercussions for anyone that publishes and engages with an audience on social networks.

The ruling has been made against three media companies, but in reality when you read the judge’s statement that “…the media organisations’ public Facebook pages were not merely ‘a conduit of the comment’ and operated for commercial purposes, which encouraged publication of comments”, you can see how this could have broad interpretation.

If you use social networks to promote a product or service, you are responsible for all of the content on your social streams. Even the comments.

Moderate, moderate, moderate

When social networks to engage with your audience, you’ll need to moderate any and all incoming content.

Facebook doesn’t have a native moderation feature, so you’ll need to use a platform like Social Studio and Social Studio Automate to do this.

You should also take this opportunity to create a robust social listening strategy, with particular focus on how you’ll vet comments on social channels.

Getting Help

The first thing we’d recommend is speaking with legal counsel and establishing what their thoughts are around the ruling.

Destined are the leading Salesforce Marketing partner in APAC, we work with clients on strategy and implementation of the entire Salesforce product suite, which includes Salesforce Social Studio.

Social Studio Automate has sophisticated tools that can help you to moderate your social channels, the platform allows you to configure a series of rules, such as “hide on Facebook” or “delete from Facebook” to help remove unwanted comments.