Yahoo Movies Lawyers use Voller defamation case to demand Facebook group admins remove posts
A Perth law firm has cited the Australian high court decision in the Voller case in a letter calling on an administrator of a Facebook community group to delete allegedly defamatory comments hosted on its page.
The high court judgment, which found that media companies could be held liable for comments by third parties on their Facebook pages, was handed down in September in response to articles about Dylan Voller, whose mistreatment in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth detention centre led to a royal commission.
The Voller case has been expected to have ramifications for any Facebook page administrator, with several organisations considering whether to allow comments at all given the increased legal risk.
The US news network CNN has blocked access to its pages in Australia, while Schwartz Media and the Tasmanian premier, Peter Gutwein, have ceased allowing comments on their Facebook pages.
Now lawyers acting for the mayor of a Western Australian council have issued a defamation threat to an administrator of a local Facebook group demanding the removal of allegedly defamatory comments, citing the Voller ruling.
The letter was sent by Crawford Yorke – a director at Loughton Yorke lawyers – acting for Bayswater city council mayor Filomena Piffaretti, to James Kozak, an administrator of a local community group with more than 200 members.
The letter points to three posts on the group – two photos taken from Piffaretti’s private Facebook profile from a private party – and one of the comments in response to a post on the page. It alleges these posts defamed Piffaretti, saying they attempted to humiliate and ridicule the mayor and implied she was unsuited to the role.
Yorke called on Kozak to delete the comments and apologise for them.
“As the administrator of the Group you bear clear legal liability for the material published within the Group,” the letter states. “We refer you Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Voller; Nationwide News Pty Limited v Voller; Australian News Channel Pty Ltd v Voller [2021] HCA in which the High Court of Australia has held that anyone that administers a social media account can be held liable for defamatory comments published on social media accounts.”
Guardian Australia understands it is not the first contact Yorke has made with a Facebook group administrator regarding comments on the site. Yorke said Facebook’s own processes for dealing with contentious material were “cumbersome and lengthy”. He said most page or group administrators acted “in good faith” and removed allegedly defamatory content immediately when approached.
Kozak indicated to Guardian Australia he was prepared to fight, saying it had not been proven that he was responsible for the content posted on the group, despite the page listing him as one of the administrators.
Yorke said the Voller judgment was a welcome development.
Related: CNN disables Facebook page in Australia after high court defamation decision
“Social media and digital platforms have been a largely unregulated space and the law has failed to keep pace with the technology,” he said. “For far too long defamation, bullying, harassment and intimidation – often directed at women in public roles – has been difficult to action or remedy on these social media platforms.
“The high court in Voller has taken a massive step towards rectifying this.”
Scott Morrison has labelled social media forums “a coward’s palace” and flagged law changes to remove protections for companies such as Facebook if they refused to reveal who was behind anonymous comments.
“They should have to identify who they are, and you know, the companies, if they’re not going to say who they are, well, they’re not a platform any more, they’re a publisher,” the prime minister said last month.
Facebook’s head of public policy in Australia, Josh Machin, has previously said any move to force the company to hand over the personal information of those making allegedly defamatory comments needed to have “rigorous checks and balances” to make sure the information was provided only where appropriate.
The Nationals MP Anne Webster introduced a private members’ bill this week which could result in social media companies being fined if they failed to remove allegedly defamatory material after being issued with a notice from the eSafety commissioner.
