Image By: Frédéric BISSON
On a forum I participate in, someone posted a question asking how others handle posts that contain anti-trust content. In the post, the community manager mentioned that they will occasionally edit members’ posts. ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! BAD IDEA!
You do NOT want to edit posts by members that contain anti-trust content. Doing so makes you a co-publisher of the content and could implicate your association (or even yourself) in a law suit. If a post doesn’t pass the anti-trust smell test, you should remove the post entirely.
Over the past five years, I’ve made several presentations on social networking risk with a lawyer, during which he always tells a story like this: Imagine a post goes up that says, “Joe Blow is a cheat and he kicks puppies.” Somehow you know that Joe doesn’t kick puppies, so as the community manager, you remove the words “and he kicks puppies.” You’ve now taken part in the publication of slanderous content, and could be named in a law suit if you can’t prove that Joe is, in fact, a cheat.
A similar story could be told about anti-trust. Imagine a post that goes up saying, “I think we should all stop advertising with The Gazette and set our pricing 5% below Acme Corp.” As the community manager, you remove the price-setting phrase, but fail to remove the boycott phrase. You have just taken part in the publication of a call to boycott The Gazette.
Just remove posts that contain anti-trust content. Don’t edit.
