Is user generated content your responsibility?

Today’s row over the Government’s response to the information available via the Advisory Service for Squatters website poses an interesting question for web 2.0 exponents.

The government has launched an online guide offering advice to people wanting to stop squatters from entering their properties. The move is in response to information that is regularly posted on the Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) website which they say “is like an estate agent for squatters”. Posters on the ASS forum pass on information about empty properties ripe for squatting.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular issue, it is an interesting dilemma for social media users. If you are the ‘webmaster’ of a website are you responsible for content on there – even if it’s put there by a third party using web 2.0 functionality?

Should you take responsibility for racist or sexist comments for example? Or, to take it to its extreme, if you allowed someone to post details of how to make a bomb as a response to your blog, do you have any responsibility for someone using that information?

Or does the web’s principle of universal freedom of information trump those concerns?

A dilemma and one that will become more and more common in the future.

By Steve Downes
Juice Digital
Social Media agency, Manchester