A new ruling opens legal liability for Facebook comments. Here’s how to moderate your page

A recent high-court ruling has set a new precedent for defamation within social media comment sections and comments on websites, with potential ramifications for small businesses active online.

With the 5-2 ruling in favour of Dylan Voller, the judge determined that if you post content on your social media page and encourage or invite comments, you’re legally the ‘publisher’ of those comments — and can therefore be sued for defamation.

For small businesses who may already be struggling to find enough resources to run their social media pages, it’s a potential timebomb.

While the ruling was specifically against a media company — making it easier to deem them a ‘publisher’ on Facebook — the same logic could hypothetically be applied to any small business active on social media.