Updated August 2023

As a leading voice for Australia’s entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and business managers, SmartCompany has a strong presence on social media through owned channels, staff accounts and those of subscribers and readers. While SmartCompany strongly believes in the importance of this in order to support a robust and diverse information landscape in Australia, it also recognises the harm that these platforms may cause. 

SmartCompany has therefore put the following social media moderation measures in place to foster a safe and constructive environment that is legally sound, transparent, and does not stifle public debate.

Content moderation

Across Meta, SmartCompany has submitted a list of words and phrases that are automatically screened. User comments that contain these words will be hidden. 

SmartCompany’s audience team will also manually monitor social media comments throughout the working day. Antisocial comments which contain highly offensive or defamatory content, or comments that incite harm, violence, or attack a protected group will be hidden or deleted, and in some instances, the user blocked (see below).

If the post is attracting a large number of antisocial comments or is at risk of doing so, the comments section may be closed at the audience team’s discretion.

Note: While SmartCompany is committed to the moderation of its social media comments, the audience team cannot provide continuous monitoring. 

Banning or blocking users

SmartCompany reserves the right to block or ban a user from its social media platforms if they engage with SmartCompany’s posts or other users’ posts in a manner that is deemed antisocial. The user does not need to be issued a warning before being blocked or banned, nor do they need to be informed that this has taken place. The audience team can reinstate or unblock a user at their discretion but are under no obligation to do so.

Conflict resolution process

In the event that a user feels that they or another user has been defamed, made to feel unsafe, or vilified by anything that SmartCompany has posted on social media or that another user has posted on SmartCompany’s social media, the user’s first point of call should be SmartCompany’s support team at: feedback@smartcompany.com.au. 

Policy guidelines

This social media policy will be available via SmartCompany’s website under Code-of-conduct > Social media policy. This policy is subject to change at any time.

Any questions or concerns regarding this policy can be directed to SmartCompany support at feedback@smartcompany.com.au.