has a public Facebook page on which it places a comment and which invites members of the public, who have Facebook accounts, whether subscribers or otherwise, to comment. 9 Those third-party comments contain material that is said to be defamatory and the fundamental issue for the Court is to determine whether each of the defendant media companies is liable for the defamatory material in the thirdparty comments. The content and terms of the alleged defamation, or the imputations that are said to arise, are irrelevant for present purposes. 10 More relevant, for the determination of the question by the Court, is the process by which the third-party comments are published to the world on a public Facebook page and the manner in which a public Facebook page operates. On that issue, there was significant evidence, including expert evidence, although much of it is uncontroversial. 11 It should be noted that the plaintiff does not allege, in any of the proceedings, that the defendant was negligent in allowing the third-party comments to remain on the public Facebook page. Nor does the plaintiff allege that any of the defendants were negligent or reckless in failing to delete the comments, once it was aware that the defamatory material was on their public Facebook page. Otherwise, the issue to be resolved in relation to the separate question relates to the operation of a public Facebook page and the operation of each of the defendants and not to the content of the publication. 12 The plaintiff relied upon two reports of Mr Ryan Shelley from Pepper Pty Ltd, dealing with the operation of Facebook, the media and, in particular, a public Facebook page. Essentially, the evidence before the Court is that media outlets, including each of the defendants, use Facebook as a channel for broadcasting news stories, or providing links thereto. 13 Typically, this is achieved by posting a link, on their public Facebook page on which a story is introduced with an image, a headline and a comment about the article. The comment about the article links back to the full article on the news website. The public is then invited to make comment on the publication either on the public Facebook page or the news website.

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