Case Update: Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd; Nationwide News Pty Limited; Australian News Channel Pty Ltd v Voller [2021] HCA 27

On 8 September 2021, Australia’s High Court dismissed an appeal by three Australian media organisations, finding that they were the publishers of third-party comments on their Facebook pages. A majority of the Court found that the media companies facilitate, encouraged and thereby assisted the posting of comments by third party Facebook users and that this rendered the media companies publishers of those comments for defamation purposes.