‘Have broad shoulders if you are on social media’

NEW DELHI: Users publishing posts on social media platforms should have broad shoulders to handle negative comments about their posts that can be subjected to appreciation or criticism, the Delhi high court has held, while dismissing a defamation suit filed by Law Skillers, an online legal education platform, against four individuals for allegedly posting defamatory posts in a conversation thread on X.

- HT Correspondent

“A post published on a social media platform is bound either to be appreciated or criticised and the user has to have broad shoulders to bear the criticism,” a bench of Justice Manmeet PS Arora said in the February 20 verdict, released on Saturday.

The defamation suit was filed pursuant to the lead post by one of the officials of the platform NAME on his X handle, criticising the “trend of top law firms hiring ‘incompetent’ National Law University (NLU) graduates through direct campus placement. This led to the allegedly defamatory posts by the individuals who were alumnus of NLUs.