Media outlets are opting to limit comments on Facebook posts to protect themselves

Media organisations have started to use new technological safeguards to limit who can make comments on posts online and remove the risk of potential legal action.

The ABC is bringing its social comments policy into line with other media outlets. Picture: AFP

The ABC has adopted new technological safeguards to restrict online comments in a move that shields it from potential legal action, putting the national broadcaster in lock-step with Australia’s major commercial media outlets.

Both News Corp and Nine Entertainment have been using the new Facebook tool for the past month, and the ABC confirmed last week that it has begun “testing the function” by closing comments on selected Facebook posts in order to “prevent harmful, defamatory or otherwise unlawful user contributions”.

Previously, comments could be made on the Facebook pages of news organisations without those media entities having any right of veto over them before publication, with the only option being to remove offensive or defamatory posts manually.

The adoption of the new technology by Australia’s biggest media organisations comes as the long-running defamation case involving Dylan Voller returns to the High Court on Tuesday.

Voller featured in a 2016 ABC Four Corners program about the detention and mistreatment of Aborigines at the Don Dale Youth Detention in the Northern Territory.

Voller launched legal action against media outlets in 2017 after claiming he was defamed by online comments posted on the Facebook pages of news websites, but the media organisations involved, including News Corp (publisher of The Australian) and Nine, argued they were not immediately aware of the posts.

News Corp and Nine took action after a Court of Appeal decision determined that media organisations were the true publishers of the Facebook comments, despite not being aware they were made until later and not knowing who was responsible for publishing them.

The matter was ultimately referred to the High Court, which could hand down its finding as early as Tuesday.

University of Sydney law professor David Rolph said Facebook’s move to allow news outlets to turn off Facebook comments was a “sensible” way to manage technological developments and stop unmoderated disparaging remarks being posted online.

“Most media publications have been living with managing risk for defamation and other forms of liability like contempt for decades,” he said.

“If there’s a possibility media outlets are going to be liable for third-party comments on stories, even if the stories themselves are not defamatory, they can now remove the comments so you remove that risk.”

The Australian’s social media editor Elyse Popplewell said the new Facebook function limiting comments was “long overdue”.

“We can now share news to Facebook that we were previously holding off,” she said. “Our team have welcomed the feature, but it falls short of what would really help facilitate meaningful conversations with our communities.”

She said comments are turned off on posts deemed a risk for harmful conversation, but media outlets remained exposed.

“We will not turn comments off for every single article, which means there is nothing stopping someone publishing something defamatory on articles we deem low risk,” Ms Popplewell said.

“We are moderating reactively rather than proactively because Facebook has not yet given us the tools to do it any other way.”

An ABC spokesman said it recently started to use the function to “limit or disable comments on posts to avoid causing offence”.

“The ABC is testing the feature,” he said.

Facebook declined to answer specific questions put to them.