receive every day to decide what was acceptable. The evidence suggests it
takes no more than an average of 10 seconds (T, p 159 per Pfeiffer) to review
a comment, in which case 7,000 comments per day (the greatest number of
comments on any of the defendants’ pages on any day) would require the
equivalent of an additional 2.5 employees, assuming, contrary to the evidence,
that no work hours are currently expended on the task.
66
If all comments were hidden, in the manner suggested, Mr Love saw that as a
“free speech” issue and, although he was uncertain about it, an issue that may
affect the Facebook algorithm, which may affect the organisation’s overall
performance on Facebook. The ultimate fear was that there would be overall
fewer comments, because the blocked comment would not be seen and would
not, as a consequence, excite further comments.
67
The organisation, Australian News Channel, monitors the popularity of the
Facebook page (or each of its public Facebook pages) and compares it to the
ratings received by other publications of a similar kind.
68
Ms Ryan was cross-examined (as were each of the witnesses) on essentially
the same subject matters. Her evidence is to the effect that the Facebook page
was operated for the benefit of Nationwide News, being an exercise to seek to
increase the awareness of the publication, being The Australian Newspaper
and increase the audience or readership of the newspaper. About half the
articles that were published in The Australian were selected for placement on
the Facebook page.
69
The link on the Facebook page would take a reader to The Australian
Newspaper. Initially, when Ms Ryan first commenced in her current position, a
reader could then read up to three articles from The Australian without
payment. About halfway through the period of her employment, the number of
articles that a reader could read without payment reduced to one article.
70
Again, Ms Ryan attested to the existence of two filters: one operated by
Facebook known as “Profanity Filter”, which an owner of a public Facebook
page could opt into at three different levels (“off”, “medium”, or “strong”); and
one operated by the owner itself known as “Page Moderation”. The Facebook
filter generally operated in relation to certain well-known profanities and would