102.5 ABC Perth<\/a> that he had written to Meta to ask for help, adding that social media companies had a responsibility to remove negative comments themselves.<\/p>\n“We’ve actually written to the\u00a0social\u00a0media\u00a0companies\u00a0saying we want to close comments after-hours so we prevent these abhorrent, disgusting comments,” he said.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Col Blanch addressed the matter on ABC Radio. (ABC News: Jake Sturmer)<\/p>\n
Commissioner Blanch said he was yet to hear whether Meta would still boost posts on the algorithm if comments were turned off.<\/p>\n
“But I think that would be a good corporate citizen thing to do on behalf of policing agencies,” he said.<\/p>\n
Meta has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n
Digital-age policing<\/p>\n
Retired police officer and e-safety expert Kristi McVee said it was up to the police to improve their social media moderation.<\/p>\n
“Social media is such an easy medium to get an outcome and it has been very helpful in the past and that’s\u00a0why police use it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But there has to be a little bit more consideration to what that could do for a young person \u2026 it could put them at risk.”<\/p>\n
Ms McVee said posts such as the one made by Dunsborough Police highlighted the perils of relying on social media to gather information from the public.<\/p>\n
“From just looking at that image, it’s obvious that these are young people, so they could have gone to their local high school,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But that takes man-hours.”<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Kristi McVee says police have to work harder to moderate their online pages. (Supplied: Kristi McVee)<\/p>\n
Ms Mcvee worked closely with Meta during her time with WA Police and said she did not believe they would fix the problem.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think they really care, to be honest \u2014 they’re not working for us, they’re working for their advertisers and their machines,” she said.<\/p>\n
WA Police said it used a combination of filters and manual screening to remove inappropriate comments.<\/p>\n
“The platforms encourage engagement among users, and this means that switching comments off negatively effects the reach of posts in the community,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“While WA Police Force does, on occasion, switch comments off, this is not and won\u2019t become standard practice.”<\/p>\n
Defamation risk<\/p>\n
“Innocent dissemination” laws introduced in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory in 2024 have lessened the defamation risk for publishers, but no such changes were enacted in WA.<\/p>\n
University of Western Australia legal expert Marilyn Bromberg said state laws meant leaving comments on posts posed a risk for WA Police.<\/p>\n
“If it’s their social media page they can be held responsible for any comment that anyone makes,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t mean someone would win a case, but they can be sued.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/e8dddf0b959fb692aacce815a1bd6b24.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Jacqueline McGowan\u2011Jones says young people need to be protected from online abuse. (Supplied: WA Commissioner for Children and Young People)<\/p>\n
Beyond legal liability, the emotional toll of police social media posts can be high.<\/p>\n
Commissioner for Children and Young People Jacqueline McGowan-Jones said police had some responsibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to take care we don\u2019t expose children and young people to abuse, and that includes abuse in the comments when posting their images online,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Australian police have written to Meta to ask for moderation help after the force was criticised for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":920709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,144064,371642,50,371639,371640,371641],"class_list":["post-920708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-col-blanch","tag-dunsborough-police","tag-news","tag-police-facebook-wa","tag-wa-police-commissioner","tag-wa-police-facebook"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116884044770152811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n