friends on Facebook and the Administrator. When an Administrator deletes a
comment on a public Facebook page, the comment will be permanently
removed from the page and unable to be seen by anyone (including thereafter
the Administrator).
20
Facebook, itself, can utilise a dictionary of known terms and delete or block, in
advance, the publication of any comment that uses one of those words.
Owners of a public Facebook page can choose to subscribe, at three different
levels, to that list of deletions. Typically, words that are expletives, racist terms
and the like, are blocked from comments utilising the dictionary to Facebook.
Nevertheless, such a blocking mechanism can be overcome by the use of a
synonym that is not otherwise the subject of such blocking mechanism.
21
In most instances, the dictionary is used to render a message containing a
word in the dictionary hidden. This occurs when an Administrator hides a
comment.
22
When an Administrator uses one or more of the tools available to the publisher
of a public Facebook page to hide a comment, the comment will be visible in
grey to the Administrator and to those people who are entitled to see it. Those
people entitled to see it, other than the Administrator (or a person using the
Administrator’s identity) are the person who made the comment and Facebook
friends of the person who has made the comment.
23
As a consequence, a person who has made a comment that has been hidden
will be aware that the Administrator has moderated the comment, by hiding it.
Persons, other than the Administrator, the commentator and the Facebook
friends of the person who has made the comment, would be unable to see the
comment at all.
24
If a comment has been hidden, by automatic operation of the tools in place for
the public Facebook page, the Administrator may, at any later time, choose to
change the status of the comment so that it is no longer hidden. Further, the
tool that hides a comment, as a consequence of a rule that may be made by
the Administrator, may be turned off or discontinued.