High Court puts muzzle on Facebook trolls

It should be noted the High Court decision was not determining blame in a defamation matter but inevitably this sort of decision may well generate a whole slew of defamation actions now.

Moving forward it can be seen as a good ruling in that it stops news media and other page owners washing their hands of what occurs on pages they control.

However the media groups rightly expressed frustration that at the time of the comments relating to Mr Voller, they were hampered because Facebook did not allow them to turn off the comments function. That has now changed to allow publishers to switch off comments on stories.

However, it highlights the difficulty traders now face with newer technologies. Will we see a return to times gone by where all comments are moderated before they are published? Will we now see moderation of comments which may lead to manipulation of opinions and weaponization of comments (picking comments which show one viewpoint only)?

There can also be limitations on what can be achieved by page owners. You cannot turn comments off on ads on Facebook.

We think there will be an adjustment made to the laws to allow a notice period wherein they must be taken down after notification by the person defamed. That is similar to the copyright Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

However, the nature of defamation is that the person is defamed from the time the post is public. Thus even with a notice period defamation may occur before it is taken down. Thus this is a very different concept to copyright infringement given how serious defamation is…. and how long lasting defamation can be.