Facebook ruling – brands responsible for comments

A significant ruling has been made by Australia’s advertising watchdog against Carlton & United Breweries VB Facebook page that effectively says that Facebook is an advertising medium and therefore brands are responsibly for all comments and posts by users submitted to their pages. This makes brands personally responsible for all comments that appear on their Facebook Pages, an huge moderation task and something that looks to be as difficult to enforce as it will be to monitor.

Fortunately the ASA here in the UK has said that there are no plans to bring in any similar legislation, however the concern is still very real as the courts struggle to make sense of the new online advertising landscape.