50
The evidence of Mr Pfeiffer was that he estimated between two and five posts
were made by the Centralian Advocate to its public Facebook page each day,
some of which attracted no comments and others of which received many. On
average, a publication on the public Facebook page received between four and
10 comments. Mr Pfeiffer estimated that the Centralian Administrators
collectively spent between one and three hours each day working on the
Facebook page. The comments on the public Facebook page are monitored.
51
Mr Love attested to the operations of the Australian News Channel Pty Ltd and
is the Head of Digital for that defendant. Australian News Channel has no less
than six Facebook pages, two of which are the Bolt Report and Sky News
Australia, on each of which latter two publications are matters about which the
plaintiff complains.
52
Save for the differences associated with the different operations of each
company and, in the case of the Australian News Channel, the different
operations of each public Facebook page, the evidence of Mr Love is, again,
consistent with and to the same effect as other defendants’ witnesses.
53
Further, the process by which an article (in this case, usually a video) is
published on the public Facebook pages is the same as in relation to other
defendants. Further again, the process by which a comment may be blocked,
either on the basis of its content or the identity of the commentator, is the same
as for the other dependants, as is the process by which comments may be
hidden.
54
The Sky News Editors and Bolt Report Editors post 60 to 80 times per day to
the Sky News Australia Facebook page and each post can receive between no
comments and up to 1800 comments on the Sky News Australia Facebook
page. Mr Love explains that the continual monitoring, blocking and/or hiding
Facebook comments on the public Facebook pages, to which these
proceedings relate, would require a disproportionate amount of effort to the
number of occasions that users have been blocked or comments deleted or
hidden. However, obviously, there are far more work hours expended in
posting these “articles” than in the other defendants’ operations and, therefore,