Facebook warned over legal action after revenge porn case

A libel lawyer has warned that Facebook could face legal action from victims of revenge porn after the company reached an out-of-court settlement with a teenage girl in Northern Ireland.

Paul Tweed said he had been "deluged" with inquiries after the settlement with the 14-year-old girl.

She sued Facebook after a man allegedly posted a naked photo of her on a so-called "shame" page.

Facebook has said it takes the issue of revenge porn seriously.

It said it has developed tools to tackle the problem.

In a statement, the company also said that "for legal reasons, we are only at liberty to state that no judgement has been rendered in this case and that there has been no determination of any actual or potential liability for Facebook".

The court was told that the case was the first of its kind in the world.

The girl sued Facebook for damages, alleging misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act.

Following out-of-court negotiations, she agreed to a confidential settlement with Facebook, which included her legal costs.

Facebook did not admit any liability in the case.

Mr Tweed, who is based in Belfast, said the issue of revenge porn was a "major social problem which, unfortunately, the law as it currently stands is not geared up to deal with".

"We're seeing considerable increase in the number of people that are receiving threats of publication of inappropriate photographs and images," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"The difficulty we have in these cases is that I would like to be able to say to them, 'look, there's not a chance that Facebook, or any of the social networking giants, will allow publication of such photographs or images'.

"I can't do that. And the difficulty here is that once publication has been made, it's often too late.

"In a matter of minutes, these images can be disseminated to thousands of people and, unfortunately, it has the net result of destroying lives."