VB's Facebook page was littered with user-posted comments, one of the least offensive of which was that "women should be chained to da kitchen". This led to a complaint to the Advertising Standards Board.
The ASB has now ruled that a company's Facebook page is an advertisement and the company is responsible for content posted by the public.
Similar complaints were made against VB and Smirnoff. The ASB upheld the complaint against VB saying that companies need to monitor and remove offensive material within a reasonable time from their Facebook pages. The complaint against Smirnoff was dismissed.
While the ruling doesn't have any legal effect (the ASB is an industry self-regulator with no teeth), a recent Federal Court decision found that a company breached an undertaking to the Court because it didn't delete false or misleading user comments from its Facebook wall after becoming aware of their existence.
The ACCC is now threatening legal action against companies that fail to remove misleading comments from their Facebook pages. Big brands that actively use Facebook are expected to detect and remove misleading comments within 24 hours of being posted.
What you need to know
If you use Facebook to promote yourself, then you need to make sure you have a system in place to monitor your Facebook page for any false or misleading comments that are posted by the public. The bigger you are, the more vigilant you'll need to be about who's posting what on your wall because misleading comments need to be taken down fast. Apart from which, leaving up the kind of stuff VB was hosting is just a bad look. You can check out the gory detail here.
It's time to start Facebook stalking yourself.
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