Australia Says Media Companies Can Be Sued Over User Comments On Facebook
from the intermediary-liability-gone-mad dept
It's no secret that Australia has taken a very different view towards intermediary liability than the US, saying (for example) that search engines can be responsible for search results it had nothing to do with, and even that they can be held liable if you are offended by the images that show up next to yours in an image search. So perhaps the latest such case in Australia shouldn't be a surprise. A court has ruled that media companies can be held liable for comments on their news stories. And not just the comments on their own pages... but on Facebook.
And the reasoning here is truly incredible. Because an "expert" testified that news sites could "hack" Facebook with a filtered list of common words to block comments, that magically makes them liable. No, really.
The judge wrote that each company had the power to effectively delay reader comments on Facebook and monitor if they were defamatory before "releasing" them to the audience.
This was based on evidence from social media expert Ryan Shelley, who testified that although you can't turn off comments on Facebook posts, you can deploy a "hack" to pre-moderate them.
Shelley's hack involves putting 100 of the most commonly used words in the English language ("a", "the", etc) on a Facebook filter list, causing any comment containing those words to be automatically hidden from the public.
Not doing that convoluted "hack" magically makes the news sites (not even Facebook) liable as a publisher for the comments. The judge's reasoning here is pretty incredible:
But Rothman found each company could reasonably monitor comments if they had sufficient staff to do so.
Rothman said that each media company running a public Facebook page had "little to do with freedom of speech or the exchange of ideas".
"Rather, the media companies’ use of a public Facebook page is about their own commercial interests," he said.
He acknowledged that "of course" it is the reader who writes the comment and posts it, but the media companies had brought about that result by running a public Facebook page where the comment could be seen, and by not hiding and moderating comments.
The comments are therefore published, for defamation purposes, by the media companies, he wrote.
"Each defendant was not merely a conduit of the comment. It provided the forum for its publication and encouraged, for its own commercial purposes, the publication of comments."
This has shades of the awful Delfi decision in the European Court of Human Rights, that held that a publication could be liable for its comments, but this seems even worse, as it's not even comments on the news organization's own site. Even worse, the idea that news sites have to somehow "hack" third party sites to "pre-block" all comments seems insane. This seems like the mirror images of the US. This kind of ruling goes even beyond Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy in the US -- the case that inspired Section 230 of the CDA.
It seems increasingly wise for internet companies not to offer any services in Australia, as the threat of liability extends so far as to be untenable.
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Filed Under: australia, comments, content moderation, dylan voller, intermediary liability, news sites
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More proof
we need a "technology literacy certification" before judges should be allowed to rule on anything involving technology.
Since "common sense" doesn't seem to be required...
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Re: More proof
need a "technology literacy certification"
Would this be like knowing the necessary #hashtags?
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Do they do things that differently in Australia? Can I, as a private citizen, declare something is defamatory and force someone to take it down? Usually it takes a judge to declare a statement is defamatory. How is this not going to put civil discourse into an absolute zero wasteland?
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Australia Comment System Be Like...
Australia: G’Day Mate. Welcome to Outback Steakhouse, May I Take Your Order?
Facebook User: Yes, I’ll have the...
Australi: (Slams Court Order On Table)
Australia: You’ve been served
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Re: Australia Comment System Be Like...
Why would there be an Steakback Outhouse in Australia?
That's like having a Jimmy the Greek in Greece, or an Olive Garden in Italy, or a Taco Bell in Mexico. Why pay money for a cheap imitation, when you're surrounded by the real thing?
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Re: Re: Australia Comment System Be Like...
Someone might actually like the food of those restaurants without regard to the history of that type of food—IOW they're not using them as an "imitation" of anything.
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Re: Re: Australia Comment System Be Like...
Who gives a flying fuck? It was a joke. Stop being a pedant.
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Times
Cory Doctorow was just writing about this problem in the Times today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/opinion/future-free-speech-social-media-platforms.html
If companies can be held liable like this, it means comments will be filtered down to nothing.
Which is certainly a desirable result for big corporations/scammers that don't want uncensored information about their products, bad reviews, or anything they can't control.
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Re: Times
And here's the version not behind a Flay-Wall:
https://boingboing.net/2019/06/24/fix-the-net-or-fix-big-tech.html
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Re: Re: Times
And here's the version not behind a Flay-Wall:
https://boingboing.net/2019/06/24/fix-the-net-or-fix-big-tech.html
Ooops. Not. Just turn off java script for the times.
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Cleaning up the blood while ignoring the stab wound
'We can either try to fix Big Tech (by making it use its monopoly profits to clean up its act)
That sounds remarkably like 'nerd harder' there, an idea that is regularly called out and mocked on TD...
'...or we can fix the internet (by breaking them up and denying them access to monopoly profits) -- but we can't do both.
And this raises the question that others have raised, 'break them up into what?'
Take YouTube for example. Break that away from Google and it's still the dominant video platform. It's still facing the same moderation problems from before, except now it has less money to work with to deal with them. Any potential competitors are still facing the same significant resource requirement to become viable competitors, and are still open to being sued by the same groups who've gone after YouTube in the past for various reasons.
As for the 'source' article I've got several problems with that one too, as it strikes me as rather bi-polar, talking about how the regulations and removal of immunity that killed off smaller platforms and entrenched the major players as the only ones able to survive are bad in the start, only to veer off into blaming the large platforms for... becoming the only way to post because they're the only ones who can afford to follow the regulations, with a dash of nerd harder there as well('So the platforms fixed this the Silicon Valley way: They automated it. Badly.')
If the hypothetical regulations and legal obligations are what ensured the dominance of the major platforms and ensured that only 'clean, family friendly' content could be posted then it seems to me that the main focus should be on those in the hypothetical, with less time spent on how if only the companies involved had been broken up(and again, 'into what?') then it wouldn't have gotten that bad.
If a company is abusing it's position to the detriment of society then that's a problem worth addressing, but if regulations and legal liability will ensure that only the larger companies can survive because the smaller ones simply do not have the resources then I'd say that's a much larger problem.
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Re: Times
Seeing as its Cory Doctorow, it is unsurprising the the killer two lines from the piece are its last:
"Our first mistake was giving the platforms the right to decide who could speak and what they could say. Our second mistake was giving them the duty to make that call, a billion times a day."
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Hacking
Of course, why didn't I think of that! We should all just hack Facebook if it isn't exactly what someone else wants it to be!
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Re: Hacking
TRY THIS...
Lets send ALL the posts on FB to the Judge for censorship..
1 days worth should be enough...and as he MADE this assumption...
Give him the same requirement that all 1,000,000,000,000,000 comments Must be done by the end of the day..
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Cake and Eat It
facebook inc does not want to be required to uphold free speech...
facebook inc does not want to be liable for speech it keeps on its platform..
maybe facebook inc grew too big too fast and cannot handle its operations without getting a pass...
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Re: Cake and Eat It
And you want corporations to always decide whether your speech can be published or not. Because if you hold them liable for your speech, they will control whether it is published or not.
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Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
Either facebook inc allows all speech or facebook inc should be responsible for the media it is curating. If it is having trouble offering a product service and being responsible for its content then maybe it needs to examine the business model or embrace that free speech.
You can't loose money and make it up with volume forever...
The best / worst thing going for facebook inc is the three letter agencies love the data.
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Re: Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
You should blame Kinko's for letting a person write libelous bumper sticket (libel = illegal speech)
You should blame your local government for letting a person read a play outside of my house in 'public' (performing a play is copyright infringement since it is a public performance)
You should blame your State/Province for letting a person threaten a co-worker (illegal speech)
You should blame the First Amendment for letting people be dicks....
If you start to blame Facebook for letting people say things and holding THEM responsible, you take the onus off the real asshole and open up for stupid lawsuits. This isn't about having a cake and eating it too... It's about the damn cake being allowed to exist in the first place!
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Re: Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
That leads to 8 chan, or letters to the editor, with nothing in between.
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Re: Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
"Either facebook inc allows all speech or facebook inc should be responsible for the media it is curating."
What law states this?
Oh, and you may want to look up the word curating.
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Re: Cake and Eat It
facebook inc does not want to be required to uphold free speech...
Facebook is not required or interested in "Upholding Free Speech." They provide a platform for other people to communicate.
No online service can operate without some form of moderation and TOS. Anyone who insists otherwise is free to start their own "Free Peach" website and show us how that works out.
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Re: Cake and Eat It
facebook inc does not want to be required to uphold free speech...
This case is not about Facebook or whether Facebook uphold's free speech.
facebook inc does not want to be liable for speech it keeps on its platform..
This case is not about Facebook or what speech it keeps on its platform.
maybe facebook inc grew too big too fast and cannot handle its operations without getting a pass...
This case is not about Facebook or how it handles its operations.
But your Facebook derangement syndrome is duly noted.
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Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
You name facebook in the headline and 10 times in the article but it is not about facebook?
lol
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Re: Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
Facebook was not a party to the suit. Facebook's moderation practices are not even remotely at issue in the case. Yet your comment is entirely about them.
Did you not even read it?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
As Anonymous Coward stated you made it about Facebook.
Now quit complaining that your users can read what you wrote.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Cake and Eat It
Heh. The comment was about FB moderation practices and how it's too big. Yet the case literally has absolutely nothing to do with that.
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As Anonymous Coward stated you made it about Facebook.
Just because something is stated does not mean it's true, and in that case it isn't.
Now quit complaining that your users can read what you wrote.
You might have a point if they had read it, but to anyone who did read the article it's clear that the only part they read was 'Facebook', because the article was very clearly about other companies using Facebook and how those other companies are liable for what's posted on their account pages, and has nothing to do with what Facebook does or does not allow.
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Re: Cake and Eat It
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act
Maybe next time learn a smidge about what you’re talking about so you don’t look quite as stupid when you post.
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Are we sure this is stupidity?
At this point it seems willful that Australia is trying to make internet engagement criminal. At this point it seems like malice, an agenda to kill the internet.
It won't. It'll drive more of the internet underground. More people will act and post anonymously. More people will be indistinguishable from pedophiles and terrorists. More of the internet will look less like Techdirt or the New York Times, and more like /b.
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Re: Are we sure this is stupidity?
Invest in Australian VPN now!
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when can leave....
I am feeling embarrassed to be an Australian, the USA is looking better everyday
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Re: when can leave....
Save yourself! Move to the Bahamas! Anywhere but the US in its death spiral.
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perhaps think about the country where all this sort of shit started and go from there!
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Re:
perhaps think about the country where all this sort of shit started and go from there!
We should blame Africa? Well that is technically the Continent where it all started. Mesopotamia is often cited as the "Cradle of Civilization" so I guess we can blame them for all sorts of things!
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Re:
Turkey?
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WHO the hell...
"This was based on evidence from social media expert Ryan Shelley, who testified that although you can't turn off comments on Facebook posts, you can deploy a "hack" to pre-moderate them. "
Can someone tell me Where this person learned programming, on a WORLD LEVEL??
That Laws of the land only stretch to the Borders.
And one reason Iv suggested the Internet Decide to call itself another nation..Independent..
AND another nation that thinks POINTING fingers and Blaming means they dont have to Clean up There own back yards
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This judge does not understand or care about free speech,
can he explain how fb can check comments every day in case maybe,
1 per cent might be defamatory ?
There,s billions of users on FB, there must be millions of comments every hour.
This is likely to less free speech in australia ,
some services being blocked there , or services may just choose to allow
users to comment on any article ,or post.
i read many articles about tech,
alot of the time the comments are just as interesting or useful
as the post itself.
Many websites like techdirt rely on comments to build a sense of community .saying all comments must be checked is not practical
in a world where a service may have millions of users .
And it places an undue burden on websites .
But australia seems to have a strange viewpoint on free speech,
police are raiding journalists homes to look for info on the source of certain articles .
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Re:
Ex Queensland Drugs Squad Copper Minister Peter Dutton is proud of the way the judges are agreeing to his total shutdown of negative comments about his government from either Whistleblowers or just Joe Blow, the effect is the same. Plebs will be quiet & take what is coming. Total dictatorial government by the rich, for the rich, reducing red & green tape for their mates & heaps of draconian laws for the rest to obey.
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'No really, GET OUT'
Whether malice or boneheaded stupidity, it's like judges like this are doing everything they can to drive online companies out of the country as fast as they can, which I'm sure will not in any way impact the economy or otherwise have negative effects.
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This is impossible to parody
Never try to parody the stupidity of government. The reality is always going to be more ridiculous than anything you could dream up.
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Australia Says Media Companies Can Be Sued Over User Comments On Facebook
This is definitely not fair dinkum.
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Black hole the source of the stupid & let the citizens fix it.
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Re:
It won't. It'll drive more of the internet underground. More people will act and post anonymously. More people will be indistinguishable from pedophiles and terrorists. More of the internet will look less like Techdirt or the New York Times, and more like
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Weight loss exercise
Are you looking for weight loss exercise? Extra weight is the main problem in the present time. so buyexerciser is the most of popular exercise review blog in the USA.
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