Hate Groups Could Land Social Networking Sites in Court

Social networking forums, where users give full vent to their gripes about everyone from gas providers and airline companies to the local bus operator, have caught the eye of media lawyers, who warn that such postings may be leaving sites such as Facebook and MySpace open to libel actions.

Advertisers raised concerns last summer over the kind of user-generated content they could be associated with on such sites, and there are now growing fears over so-called "hate pages", such as Facebook's "I hate BT".

Under current legislation, if website owners remove defamatory material as soon as they are aware of it, then they are not liable. But lawyer Nick Armstrong, writing in Media Law, published by Sweet & Maxwell, sees serious legal risks in allowing users to establish groups and pages whose sole purpose is to invite aggressive criticism of organisations and individuals. He also believes that website owners need a better grasp of their responsibilities.

"Social networking sites are perhaps being too complacent about some of the risks in this area," says Armstrong, a partner at law firm Charles Russell. "There is a widespread but inaccurate belief that posters of defamatory material are liable rather than websites themselves, but this should not be taken as a green light for social networking sites to allow users to say whatever they please."

Risk of defamation

He argues that the courts may decide that current laws do not absolve sites of responsibility if they could reasonably have known in advance that libellous comments would be made.

"Sites would be safest if they didn't allow 'I hate' pages because a court is likely to say - however impractical it is - that Facebook, or whoever, should have known that there was a risk of defamation." They could be liable for, in effect, inciting users to post defamatory material, he adds.

That leaves social networking sites with two headaches. How do they close such groups, and is it really right to decide what users should and should not discuss?

Armstrong agrees that shutting down "hate groups" is not the way forward, but says that websites need to react faster when complaints come in - which can be difficult as sites grow.

"It's like something out of Kafka trying to get through to Google, for instance. The danger with these sites is that they are so big that a complaint might not be acted on fast enough."

Facebook would not say whether it had considered banning "hate groups", but a spokeswoman did point to the site's terms of use. Users are told they cannot post content that "makes threats of any kind or that intimidates, harasses, or bullies anyone, is derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive or hateful".

guardian.co.uk