A couple of months ago in India, a local judge ruled that WhatsApp group admins could face jail for defamatory content posted in a group by another user.

This raised questions on whether this could become the case in other countries around the world, including South Africa.

According to Simon Colman, Executive Head: Digital Distribution at SHA Specialist Underwriters, it is not clear whether South African courts would adopt the same approach as in India. Local courts are however likely to be influenced by global trends with regards to accountability in the social media space.

“Much of what is being seen in India and other territories has arisen out of the proliferation of fake news. Social media by its very nature has a viral impact, this means that fabricated and/or defamatory posts have a tendency to spread like wildfire, with the potential to cause severe damage to individuals, groups and even entire economies,” Colman says.

“WhatsApp is incredibly dangerous when it comes to the posting of accidental or unintended content as delivered messages cannot be deleted, even by an administrator. Deleting a posted message after it receives the ‘double tick’ only removes it from the individual user’s time line, not from the group. People shouldn’t be posting or sharing content via social media without thinking three times,” he adds.

How to mitigate risk

Colman provides a few ways group admins can mitigate the risk of being held liable for users’ posts.

“With WhatsApp, the admin is automatically the person who creates the group, although additional admins can also be added later. These group admins have the ability to control who is invited or removed from the group chat. However, as an administrator it is not always possible to filter all the content. The role is specifically to add or remove group members, so the only way an admin can realistically respond to an offensive post is by warning or removing the offender from the group,” Colman says.

“Anyone who has ever been part of a large group on these social platforms will understand that the time line moves very quickly and the admin will often have to rely on complaints from other users to act upon inappropriate content.”

He offers the following tips admins can implement into monitoring groups:

• Have more than one administrator for each group (many hands make light work!).
• Make sure new group members understand the group’s core function or purpose clearly and what the rules of engagement are.
• Make sure everyone knows what process to follow when there is a complaint about a post.
• Act immediately once a complaint has been lodged. The infringer should retract the comment and apologise to the group, and expulsion from the group may be a last resort solution.
• Ideally admins should know the people in the group as this can go some way to manage “trolls” (anonymous users who deliberately try to cause problems by baiting other users).

Colman also emphasises responsible behaviour by group users and not placing the sole responsibility on admins.

“Each individual group member needs to understand their accountability. People tend to become somewhat detached from the consequences of their posts on social media. It is very important that people realise that sharing something on social media and WhatsApp groups can have dramatic consequences.”