The administrators of Whatsapp groups could be liable for offensive content shared by group members.
Lester Kiewit spoke to Kavita Kooverjee, attorney at SchoemanLaw Inc, about the responsibilities of Whatsapp group administrators and the circumstances where they can be held liable for offensive content.
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Group admins can be held liable for offensive posts of members
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Admins can be liable for racist, sexist, homophobic content
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Admins are set to have more control over the content on the group
The responsibility of a group administrator on a Whatsapp group, whether professional or personal, just got harder.
Soon, administrators will be held liable for offensive posts from group members.
But if you do get dragged to court and you can prove you took steps to mitigate the damage of a racist, sexist or homophobic post, you may be off the hook.
The court will look at did you do it in a reasonable time? …did you ask the person to remove the post and they didn’t remove it? ….look at what steps you took to remove the message as soon as possible.
Kavita Kooverjee, attorney – SchoemanLaw Inc
Kooverjee who specialises in Social Media law said WhatsApp group administrators would be given more powers with the new rules.
The group admins will have a lot more control. They get to delete messages. Before, they would have to ask the group member to please delete the message… or remove that person from the group.
Kavita Kooverjee, attorney – SchoemanLaw Inc
WhatsApp group administrators will also be given more time to act against hate speech in their respective groups.
The time period for removing a message is going to be moving from under an hour to two days.
That will assist group admins… to ensure there’s no discrimination and hate speech in a group.Kavita Kooverjee, attorney – SchoemanLaw Inc
This article first appeared on CapeTalk : WhatsApp group administrators to be held liable for members’ offensive posts
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