Facebook posts could be deleted weekly after Australian court ruling, experts warn

Your Facebook conversations could be deleted weekly after a controversial court decision that is making businesses “nervous,” social media experts warn.

Australian Facebook users should prepare to see their online conversations disappear after just one week in future after a controversial court decision that legal experts say could leave businesses at risk of expensive lawsuits.

Social media experts issued the warning today, saying most Australian businesses did not have the “tools or resources” to police the new ruling that would make them responsible for all comments made to even older posts on their Facebook pages, and could force them to remove content or wipe their presence from the social network entirely.

It also came as one Facebook executive spoke out against the court’s preliminary ruling, saying “individuals should be held responsible” for their behaviour on the platform.

The fallout follows a case in the New South Wales Supreme Court earlier this week in which Justice Stephen Rothman found media companies had “the capacity effectively to block a comment” on Facebook by hiding remarks based on keywords and then moderating their content.

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Your conversations on Facebook could disappear after a week following a controversial court ruling.

The case against five media companies was brought by former Northern Territory youth detainee Dylan Voller.

But social media Adviser Meg Coffey said, if upheld, the ruling was likely to have a chilling effect on social media use in Australia, and could see many Australian businesses delete Facebook posts within days as they lacked the resources to keep moderating them.

“As a small business, how do you sift through years of social media posts?” she said.

“If you’ve got 5000 or 6000 comments on a post, the average page owner doesn’t have the tools or the resources to manage or monitor that.

“And do you even have the knowledge to understand what you need to do? Defamation, especially online, is hard to judge.”

Ms Coffey said even setting up a keyword filter to stop the publication of “profanities” or sensitive topics on Facebook was fraught with problems, and was likely to see some organisations delete old posts or remove their businesses from social media.

“This will make a lot of people nervous,” she said.

“There’s an older generation of business owners who were sceptical already.

Facebook Australia has yet to comment on the court ruling. Pictured Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: AP

“Regional governments who are just starting to dip their toe into social media could consider the risk factor just too high.”

Gloss Marketing and Media founder Megan De Borrello said some companies could also face difficulties deleting posts that go back as far as 10 years as there was no way to mark a large number of comments or posts for deletion.

“But you can’t control what people say on Facebook unless you delete them all,” she said.

If found responsible for a defamatory comment published on their Facebook page, Cove Legal media expert Roger Blow said Australian businesses could face lawsuits that “cap out at around $350,000”.

But concerned business owners could find an unexpected supporter in Facebook after the company’s London-based policy solutions vice-president Richard Allen told media “we think individuals should be held responsible for the content they publish”.

Facebook Australia has yet to comment on the decision.

Originally published as Facebook posts could be deleted weekly after Australian court ruling, experts warn