Social media and your business responsibilities
Social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are a great way for businesses of all sizes to promote their products and services directly to their customers. However, businesses using social media channels do have a responsibility under the law to ensure the content on their pages is accurate, no matter who put it there.
Consumer protection laws designed to stop businesses from making false or misleading claims about products or services have been around for decades. These laws apply to social media in the same way they apply to any other marketing or sales channel - you must take care not to make false or misleading claims as part of all of your marketing and promotional activities.
You can be held responsible for posts or public comments made by others on your social media pages which are “false or likely to mislead or deceive consumers”. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) can require companies to back up any claim made on social media, and may issue an infringement notice or even take court action where the identify a breach of the law. In fact, a 2011 court case concluded that a company accepted responsibility for fan posts and testimonials on its social media pages when it knew about them and did not remove them.
If you’re unsure about what you can or can’t say, it’s a good idea to seek legal advice. But as a rule of thumb, don’t make statements on social media pages that you wouldn’t make in any other type of advertising. Set up clear ‘house rules’ for fans and followers on your social media pages. Monitor your social media pages and remove any posts that may be false, misleading or deceptive as soon as you are aware of them.
According to the ACCC, the amount of time a business should spend monitoring its social media pages will depend on the size of the company and the number of fans or followers. Large companies, or those with large numbers of followers are expected to remove misleading posts quickly. Smaller companies or those with smaller numbers of fans would not be expected to monitor its pages as regularly.
Businesses can respond to comments instead of removing them, if the response overrides the original comments, though it may be safer to simply remove the comments.
Overall the ACCC is more likely to pursue businesses if the false claims are likely to have a widespread impact, if the conduct is particularly blatant or if the business has previously been investigated.
Businesses should offer a refund to any customer who made the decision to purchase a product or service based on a false claim they saw on a social media page.