Social media and defamation law

I did not read their posts. Instead, I deleted them and blocked the accounts. I later responded with a Facebook post that was intended to name and shame. In this post, I referred to those who had posted on my personal Facebook page as "trolls", unaware that one of the identities was the name of a real person.

I was subsequently sued for $100,000 for defamation. While I now appreciate how easy it is to satisfy the legal criteria for defamation in Australia, it remains unclear to me what actual reputational harm my post caused. Did it cause the person to lose respect within her community? Her job? Her income?

Rather than sue for hurt feelings from a Facebook post, a person should be required to show serious harm to warrant defamation action. In the first Twitter defamation case in Australia to proceed to a full trial, a judge found a former student's posts about a school music teacher were untrue. More recently, a registered nurse sued after Facebook posts falsely claimed malpractice by the nurse and that the nurse was drinking on duty. In both these cases, the social media posts caused serious harm by damaging professional reputations.

The federal Attorney General has indicated an overhaul of defamation law that will require plaintiffs to demonstrate serious harm. Damaging professional reputations is serious; hurt feelings are not. An overhaul of the law would make it more difficult for vindictive "neighbourhood disputes" to go to court.

I did not drag my case though the courts and instead settled the case quickly. There's no suggestion that the particular lawyer involved in my case scrolled through Facebook for the post, but I was nevertheless left wondering how much the lawyer was paid.