Thread by @savndaniel

WILL I BE SUED FOR DEFAMATION IF I REPUBLISH A DEFAMATORY PUBLICATION, EVEN THOUGH IT DID NOT EMANATE FROM ME?

For a start, defamation is as an act of communicating false statements about a person to a third party, which injures the person's reputation or prevents further

association with the person.

Defamation can either be in form of slander or libel. Libel is communicating a defamatory statement made in writing, while slander is defamation by verbally.

If you initiate and post false information about anyone, by creating original contents about it, commenting, or using emotions, it may expose users to defamation. The American Court has ruled that users who repost, retweet, reshare are liable for defamation because they

have communicated the false statement and further helped in circulating to third parties and consequently causing more injury. Here, we see that the mere act of RETWEETING OR LIKING A TWEET may give rise to the tort of defamation, that is where the initial tweet is defamatory.

In McAlpine v. Bercow [2013] EWHC (QB) 1342, wrong assumptions were made by the general public, accusing the Plaintiff of being a paedophile, based on a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report of a politician involved in such act.

Consequently, many took to the cyberspace and let their assumptions go viral via tweets and posts on Facebook, linking this news to the Plaintiff, one of which was the Defendant, a fellow politician took part and tweeted:

"Why is Lord McAlpine trending? Attached to the tweet was an emoji of an innocent face. Many of her followers re-tweeted, vastly expanding the number of individuals who read the statement. It was later confirmed that the allegations against the Plaintiff were unfounded.

The Plaintiff threatened to sue everyone who insinuated he was a paedophile, including the Twitter users. This led to various settlements, but the Defendant refused to settle and was sued for defamation.

The Court held that her tweet could be reasonably understood as the FINGER OF BLAME, because the reasonable Twitter user would have interpreted the emoji as IRONIC and asking an HYPOCRITICAL QUESTION. In the end she was ordered to pay damages in the sum of US$15,000.

As it stands today, there are no existing Nigerian laws for social media offences, but the judiciary will presumably use the principles of defamation in dealing with any matter likely to injure one's character.

What the court normal do is to consider how a reasonable a user would

- interpret an allegedly defamatory statement;

- the context of the statement;

- the purpose of the post - whether a joke, facts, or sarcasm.

Every REPUBLICATION of a libel is A NEW LIBEL under the common law. IF SUCH PUBLICATION OR REPUBLICATION IS MADE BY DIFFERENT PERSONS EACH PERSON WILL BE LIABLE AS IF THE DEFAMATORY STATEMENT HAD ORIGINATED FROM HIM: see Morse v. Times Republican Co. (1904) 124 Iowa R 700.

Why am I doing this? I don't want you to get into trouble. We are in perilous times. Our democracy has been reduced into something else.

For those of you that like retweeting, sharing and liking tweets, you may find this useful.

The emperors are on the prowl.

End!