Can you protect against defamatory comments such as by trolls?
Facebook offers all users customised settings to restrict comments to block posts and comments by nominated persons, to filter comments which use a ‘moderated word’ and to hide or delete comments, after they are posted. Facebook offers these additional settings to closed Facebook Groups only:
- To ‘block’ comments by turning off “Comment”
- To ‘filter’ comments (before they are published) by choosing the setting “All Group Posts Must Be Approved By an Admin or a Moderator”
There is a strong case to be made that the privacy settings available to Facebook Groups that comments “Must Be Approved By an Admin or a Moderator” (before being posted) should be available to all Facebook users.
But until Facebook offers settings to moderate or block comments, Facebook users must effectively manage and mitigate defamatory comments. Michael Field provides these tips from a brand management perspective:
What are 11 effective ways for brands to manage social media comments?
Brands and their marketing teams must have adequate systems in place to monitor and respond in real time to social media comments effectively.
These are 11 effective ways a brand can manage social media comments:
- Develop ‘Membership and Participation Guidelines’ as an integral part of the organisation’s risk register and risk mitigation plan for brand and reputation management.
- Actively monitor all social media channels including owned, earned and paid media.
- Empower the communications and marketing teams, including third party contractors with the relevant access, delegations of authority, escalation points and tools to act immediately on any posts or comments that are in breach of the ‘Membership and Participation Guidelines’.
- Monitor all first points of customer contact such as: customer complaint logs, chatbot and chatbox comments and conversations, inbound emails, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and review sites etc.
- Implement a customer satisfaction rating system such as Net Promoter Score to identify any emerging issues as early as possible and look for trends or common areas of customer or community concerns.
- Actively monitor traditional media such as print, radio and television for any mentions of your brand (positive and negative) using a third-party monitoring service.
- Use online alert tools to track online mentions of your brand.
- Deploy social listening tools to monitor the brand's social media channels for any customer feedback and direct mentions or discussions regarding specific keywords, topics, competitors, or industries.
- Take screenshots and document formal diary notes of any conversations, communications or interactions related to comments or posts that are flagged in the moderation or monitoring of any online presence including social media pages.
- Respond courteously and quickly and aim to move the conversation offline as quickly as possible by inviting the customer to connect with a company representative who has the authority to respond to, and remedy the customer complaint.
- Actively encourage satisfied customers to write reviews reflecting their positive experiences. This can help present a more balanced approach if there are only a small number of negative comments. To read more click here.