Defamation - Hazards of Social Media Postings

The development of social media in current times had seen a growing trend of social media users posting their grievances or complaints about another person or businesses which can be viewed publicly by other social media users. The question is, is it safe to do so? The answer is in fact an emphatic no.

This is because a social media post, be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even WhatsApp can tantamount to a defamation, if it contains incriminating, embarrassing or demeaning statements about another person.

Defamation is defined as “publication of a statement that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm to a person’s reputation. For a statement to be defamatory, it must refer to the claimant and either be untrue, or incapable of being excused by any other legal defence.”

This is to mean that a social media user can be held accountable for posting any statement that can impair another individual’s reputation if the statement in that particular posting is untrue or cannot be justified by any legal means. This type of defamation is known as libel, which is the publication of a defamatory statement about an individual which is untrue. When a social media user post (or tweets, as the case maybe) a statement (which is deemed untrue) on his or her social media page which can be viewed by others, that is considered as publication of a defamatory statement in a legal sense.