Sharing, Quoting, Commenting: When Does It Become Defamation in Hong Kong?

The short version

Many people assume that sharing a post somebody else wrote is not their problem, and that deleting it once trouble starts puts the matter back where it was. Cap. 21 protects neither — but for different reasons: the first is a restriction written expressly into the Ordinance, and the second is something the Ordinance never mentions at all.

• Not being the author is not an excuse in the Ordinance. It is a disqualifying condition — on one of the section's two limbs. Section 25 provides a mechanism — an offer of amends — by which a publisher may offer a correction and an apology. Under section 25(1)(a), "if the offer is accepted by the party aggrieved and is duly performed, no proceedings for libel or slander shall be taken or continued by that party against the person making the offer in respect of the publication in question (but without prejudice to any cause of action against any other person jointly responsible for that publication);" — and section 25(6) leaves that limb alone. What section 25(6) removes from a non-author is the other limb: the fallback defence section 25(1)(b) gives a publisher whose offer was refused. It reads: "(6) Subsection (1)(b) shall not apply in relation to the publication by any person of words of which he is not the author unless he proves that the words were written by the author without malice." A person who shares someone else's words is, by definition, not the author.
• The Ordinance never mentions taking content down. It provides two express routes to mitigation of damages, and neither of them is deletion. Section 3 admits an apology, but only where the defendant has given the plaintiff "(after notice in writing of his intention to do so duly given to the plaintiff within a reasonable time before the trial of the cause)" and only where the apology was made "before the commencement of the action, or as soon afterwards as he had an opportunity of doing so". Section 17 admits evidence that the plaintiff has already recovered, or sued for, damages "for libel or slander in respect of the publication of words to the same effect as the words on which the action is founded" The words are "to the same effect", published by anyone, so a chain of re-shares of one post can fall inside the section — but it was not written for reposting. Both reduce the amount. Neither answers the claim.
• Repeating someone else's allegation is not a defence. The rule is called the repetition rule, and it is a rule of the common law, not of the Defamation Ordinance. No provision of Cap. 21 states the rule. *The Court of Final Appeal judgment that states the rule is Oriental Daily Publisher Ltd v Ming Pao Holdings Ltd, FACV 1/2012, 26 September 2012. Under the heading "G.3a The rule", Ribeiro PJ adopted Simon Brown LJ's statement of it: a defamatory report is "a report of a defamatory remark by A about B is not justified by proving merely that A said it: rather the substance of the charge must be proved." So "I was only sharing it, I didn't say it" is not, by itself, an answer. As Sedley LJ put it in a passage the Court adopted: "The repetition rule, in essence, prevents a defendant from hiding behind the fact that he is only repeating what others have alleged. He can accordingly not justify the libel by proving that the allegations have been made, but only by proving that they are true." The Court added that where a defendant cannot justify the original accusation and neither affirms nor disavows it, the repetition is in principle just as bad as making the statement directly.* In the Court's words: "But where the defendant cannot justify the original accusation and in repeating it, neither affirms nor disavows it, his repetition is in principle, as Lord Reid expressed it in Lewis v Daily Telegraph, “just as bad as making the statement directly.”"
• Four things widely stated in English-language material are not Hong Kong law. A one-year limitation period (Hong Kong's is six years); a single publication rule (Hong Kong's statute book has none); a serious-harm threshold (Cap. 21 has none); and an offer-of-amends mechanism open to any publisher with no author restriction (Cap. 21 s.25(6) imposes exactly that restriction).

1 · I didn't write it and I've deleted it — what the Ordinance actually says

Cap. 21 does contain a route by which a publisher can stop a claim — an offer of amends that is accepted and duly performed — and that route is not closed against a person who is not the author. What section 25(6) closes against a non-author is the fallback defence that remains when the offer is refused.

Section 25(6):

In other words: a person who shared the words must prove not only something about their own state of mind, but something about a different person's — that the original author wrote without malice. It is the only condition in the Ordinance that turns on the author's state of mind — and the burden of proving it sits on the non-author defendant under subsection (6), who is usually the person least able to prove it. Nothing in the section makes the plaintiff, who is the person defamed rather than the author, presumptively able to speak to the author's state of mind either. It is not the only place the section looks past the defendant himself: subsection (5) closes by extending every reference to the publisher to "any servant or agent of his who was concerned with the contents of the publication".

Three further gates sit in front of subsection (6), and the section's own heading is Unintentional defamation:

• Section 25(1) opens the offer only to a person who claims the words were published by him

innocently.

• Section 25(5) defines that narrowly, and closes: "and in either case that the publisher exercised all reasonable care in relation to the publication; and any reference in this subsection to the publisher shall be construed as including a reference to any servant or agent of his who was concerned with the contents of the publication."
• Section 25(2) adds two mandatory formalities: the offer "must be expressed to be made for the purposes of this section, and must be accompanied by an affidavit specifying the facts relied upon by the person making it to show that the words in question were published by him innocently in relation to the party aggrieved", and on a subsection (1)(b) defence no evidence other than the facts specified in that affidavit is admissible to prove innocent publication. A prompt correction and apology is not, by itself, an offer of amends under this section.

Then deletion, about which the Ordinance says nothing at all.

• Section 3 — an apology goes to the amount, not to liability, and only on conditions. The section reads: "In any action for defamation it shall be competent to the defendant (after notice in writing of his intention to do so duly given to the plaintiff within a reasonable time before the trial of the cause) to give in evidence in mitigation of damages that he made or offered an apology to the plaintiff for such defamation before the commencement of the action, or as soon afterwards as he had an opportunity of doing so in case the action has been commenced before there was an opportunity of making or offering such apology." That is mitigation of damages, not a defence — and the written notice and the timing are on the face of the section, not glosses on it.
• Section 17 — the second mitigating route, and the one about repeated words. In an action for libel or slander the defendant "may give evidence in mitigation of damages that the plaintiff has recovered damages, or has brought actions for damages, for libel or slander in respect of the publication of words to the same effect as the words on which the action is founded, or has received or agreed to receive compensation in respect of any such publication." The section's words are "to the same effect", by whoever published them: a chain of re-shares can fall within it, but it is not a provision written for reposting, and it too goes to the amount and not to liability.
• Section 4 — a defence, and not one available here. Section 4 lets a defendant plead that a libel in a newspaper was inserted "without actual malice and without gross negligence" and that a full apology was published. But the section continues: "Provided that it shall not be competent to any defendant in such action to set up any defence as aforesaid without at the same time making a payment of money into court by way of amends, and every such defence so filed without such payment into court shall be deemed a nullity and may be treated as such by the plaintiff in the action." Two limits: newspapers only, and a payment into court without which the defence is a nullity.
• Whether removal affects damages. The Ordinance is silent, and what retraction, removal or apology does to damages at common law depends on the case.

Finally, two provisions deal with truth — and neither answers the question a reader is asking. Section 26 (justification) reads: "In an action for libel or slander in respect of words containing 2 or more distinct charges against the plaintiff, a defence of justification shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every charge is not proved if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining charges." Section 27 does the same for words that are part allegation of fact and part expression of opinion. Both provisions save a defence from collapsing because one element was not proved. Neither allocates the burden of proving truth. ⚠ Where that burden lies is a common-law question.

Read together, what the section actually asks is narrower than it looks. Section 25(5) provides that "words shall be treated as published by one person (in this subsection referred to as the publisher) innocently in relation to another person if and only if the following conditions are satisfied, that is to say—" and the conditions it then lists are: "(a)that the publisher did not intend to publish them of and concerning that other person, and did not know of circumstances by virtue of which they might be understood to refer to him; or" "(b)that the words were not defamatory on the face of them, and the publisher did not know of circumstances by virtue of which they might be understood to be defamatory of that other person," — and, in either case, that the publisher "exercised all reasonable care in relation to the publication". The three things the section asks about are reference, defamatory meaning on the face of the words, and reasonable care. It never asks whether the act of publishing was chosen. A person who decides to share is therefore not disqualified by the deciding: he intended to publish the words, but he may not have intended to publish them "of and concerning" a person he has never heard of. Whether he in fact satisfies section 25(5) is a question of fact.

2 · Does the Ordinance know what a re-share is?

The Ordinance's vocabulary is newspapers and broadcasting. It does not use words such as "internet", "online" or "social media".

The only provision that deems a newer medium into permanent form deals with broadcasting. Section 22:

Section 22 names broadcasting and nothing else. So whether an online post is libel or slander in Hong Kong is not answered by the Ordinance.

3 · Does repeating someone else's allegation count as your publication?

The rule that every repetition, every share, is a separate publication is not in the Defamation Ordinance. It is a rule of the common law, stated in a Court of Final Appeal judgment.

A fresh republication does give rise to a fresh cause of action — but only "to the same extent". The Court of Final Appeal in FACV 1/2012 accepted that each repetition is a separate publication, while attaching a qualification that matters a great deal to what a claim is worth. The Court said: "The repetition is said to constitute a new libel because it gives rise to a fresh cause of action against the person responsible for the republication." The qualification follows immediately, and it is about damages rather than about liability. The Court continued: "But the reporter is still only liable, as Lord Denning accepted, “to the same extent” as the originator of the calumny." So a reposter can be sued in his own right; but if the original accuser would have been discounted as lacking credibility, the reposter is answerable only to the same limited extent.

The Ordinance reflects the same point. Section 25(6) operates on "the publication by any person of words of which he is not the author" and gives that person a defence on conditions. So the Ordinance itself contemplates a person being sued for publishing words somebody else wrote.

*The second Hong Kong internet-defamation authority is Oriental Press Group Ltd v Fevaworks Solutions Ltd, FACV 15/2012. It concerns the operator of an internet discussion forum, not a person who reposts, and that distinction matters. On where publication happens, the Court held under the heading "J. A process of elimination": "It is clear law that internet material is published when and where it is accessed or downloaded in comprehensible form." It also refused to treat the person who wrote the posting as irrelevant: "There is no conceivable reason for ignoring the originator of the posting as the first and one of the main publishers." Under "K. Who is in law a 'first or main publisher'?" the Court set out two criteria. They are, in the Court's words: "They are (i) that he knows or can easily acquire knowledge of the content of the article being published (although not necessarily of its defamatory nature as a matter of law); and (ii) that he has a realistic ability to control publication of such content, in other words, editorial control involving the ability and opportunity to prevent publication of such content." Applying them, the forum operator met neither — the forum carried up to 5,000 postings an hour with 30,000 users online at a time — so it was a subordinate publisher and could rely on the common law defence of innocent dissemination. On what reasonable care demands, the Court held under "L. Reasonable care and subsequently acquired knowledge": "What is needed to satisfy the standard of reasonable care will vary according to the circumstances." It added that in an internet context the standard may demand particular monitoring of postings by certain forum members or on particular topics where past experience shows a special risk; and that once the operator learns of the defamatory content, what matters is whether it was taken down within a reasonable time. The operator there removed the 2008 postings about three and a half hours after notice, which the Court accepted as reasonable. ⚠ The limit of Fevaworks: the case decides the position of a platform operator, and the Court did not decide there which class of publisher a person who presses share, quotes, or adds a comment belongs to.* Whether the position of a platform or forum operator is the same as that of a person who himself presses share, quotes, or adds a comment was not decided in that case; the same goes for posting a bare link, and for a preview or thumbnail a platform generates by itself.

4 · How long can a claim be brought?

Six years, under section 4(1)(a) of the Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347) — and it is six years because Cap. 347 never names the tort at all, not because it gives defamation a period of its own. Six years is also not a free-standing figure: the same Ordinance makes every ordinary period subject to extension. And the section says what the six years runs from: section 4(1) opens "The following actions shall not be brought after the expiration of 6 years from the date on which the cause of action accrued, that is to say—" ⚠ But when a cause of action in defamation accrues is something Cap. 347 never answers — that is a common-law question.

The provision that governs the six years, and the extension that is live on these facts. Section 4 sits in Part II, and section 3(2) — the provision that opens the Part — reads: "(2) The ordinary limitation periods are subject to extension or exclusion in accordance with Part III." Part III carries section 26, which applies where "any fact relevant to the plaintiff’s right of action has been deliberately concealed from him by the defendant" and provides that "the period of limitation shall not begin to run until the plaintiff has discovered the fraud, concealment or mistake (as the case may be) or could with reasonable diligence have discovered it." Section 26(2) extends the defendant: "(2) References in subsection (1) to the defendant include references to the defendant’s agent and to any person through whom the defendant claims and his agent." Section 26 is a general provision about fraud, deliberate concealment and mistake. It is not addressed to defamation, and it is not written around anonymous posting. An anonymous or pseudonymous repost, or one taken down before the person it names learns of it, is a fact pattern that may raise the section — but not knowing who published, or the post having been deleted, does not by itself engage it: the plaintiff must bring the case within the section's own terms. ⚠ Whether the extension applies to a particular set of facts is a question about evidence.

Hong Kong's statute book contains no single publication rule. Whether the Hong Kong common law has adopted such an approach is unsettled.

The Court of Final Appeal held in FACV 1/2012 that a republication gives rise to a fresh cause of action against the person responsible for it (section 3), so, there being no statutory rule to the contrary, each carries its own six-year period. ⚠ The precise moment at which a cause of action accrues for an online posting was not decided in that judgment.

One limit: the six years is a limit on section 4, and section 4(7) puts equitable remedies — an injunction, or an order compelling performance — outside that section altogether. The subsection does not stop there. It carries a closing exception: the section may still be reached by analogy, where a court draws on one of its provisions in the way an English court draws on the matching English enactment. Six years is a fact about a claim for damages. It is not a fact about everything a claimant can ask for, and because of that closing exception it is not a clean exemption either. ⚠ And section 4(7) is about limitation, not about whether relief would be granted: on what basis a court restrains a publication, or orders its removal, is a common-law question. The subsection is set out in full in the separate guide: Received a lawyer's letter?

For the full limitation framework and the court deadlines that begin once proceedings are served, see this site's separate guide: Received a lawyer's letter?

⚠ An acknowledgment does not restart the limitation clock on a defamation claim. The fresh accrual in Cap. 347 s.23(3) is confined to a right of action "to recover any debt or other liquidated pecuniary claim", or a claim to the personal estate of a deceased person. A claim in defamation is an unliquidated claim in tort, and nothing the other side acknowledges converts it into a debt. Section 23(1) and (2) concern land and mortgages and do not touch a defamation claim either.

5 · The English-language material you have already read is about somewhere else

Four propositions common in English-language material are not Hong Kong law.

<table> <caption>Four points of contrast — England and Wales against Hong Kong. English provisions from legislation.gov.uk (Limitation Act 1980 s.4A and Defamation Act 2013 ss.1 and 8, currency 29 June 2026; Defamation Act 1996 s.2, currency 17 May 2024), used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Hong Kong provisions from the Defamation Ordinance (Cap. 21), version in force 3 March 2022, and the Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347), version in force 9 July 2020. URLs for each provision are in Sources below.</caption> <tr><th></th><th>England and Wales</th><th>Hong Kong</th></tr> <tr><td>Limitation period for defamation</td><td><strong>1 year</strong> — Limitation Act 1980 s.4A</td><td><strong>6 years</strong> — Cap. 347 s.4(1)(a), reached through the general provision</td></tr> <tr><td>Single publication rule</td><td><strong>Yes</strong> — Defamation Act 2013 s.8</td><td><strong>None in the statute book</strong> — no chapter contains it</td></tr> <tr><td>Serious-harm threshold</td><td><strong>Yes</strong> — Defamation Act 2013 s.1</td><td><strong>None in Cap. 21</strong></td></tr> <tr><td>Offer of amends</td><td>Defamation Act 1996 s.2 — <strong>no author restriction</strong></td><td>Cap. 21 s.25(6) — <strong>closes only the s.25(1)(b) fallback defence</strong> to a non-author, unless he proves the author wrote without malice; the s.25(1)(a) accepted-offer route stays open</td></tr> </table>

The fourth row is the one that matters, and it is a different kind of difference from the first three. Rows one to three are each a change England made and Hong Kong never made. Row four is a clause in the Hong Kong provision that the English one does not contain at all.

The English section opens like this:

No author restriction, no requirement of innocence, no affidavit. Its formalities are three and only three:

Hong Kong's section 25 has all three of the gates England does not have, and section 25(6) is aimed precisely at a person who reposts.

⚠ England's side carries three limits, and all three make the gap smaller:

• The English rule only ever governs one person publishing twice. Section 8(1) sets the condition on which the whole section operates:

> "(1) This section applies if a person— (a) publishes a statement to the public (“the first publication”), and (b) subsequently publishes (whether or not to the public) that statement or a statement which is substantially the same."

The first publisher and the subsequent publisher are the same person. A re-share by somebody else is outside section 8 altogether, and subsections (4) and (5) are never reached. So even in England the rule does not apply to a stranger's repost.

Where it does apply — one person posting the same thing again — it still does not reach a later publication made in a materially different manner, and the statute names its own factors:

> "(4) This section does not apply in relation to the subsequent publication if the manner of that publication is materially different from the manner of the first publication."

> "(5) In determining whether the manner of a subsequent publication is materially different from the manner of the first publication, the matters to which the court may have regard include (amongst other matters)— (a) the level of prominence that a statement is given; (b) the extent of the subsequent publication."

The level of prominence and the extent of the later publication are exactly what change when the same person re-posts to a larger audience.

• England's one year is not a hard stop.

> "(6) Where this section applies— (a) it does not affect the court's discretion under section 32A of the Limitation Act 1980 (discretionary exclusion of time limit for actions for defamation etc), and (b) the reference in subsection (1)(a) of that section to the operation of section 4A of that Act is a reference to the operation of section 4A together with this section."

⚠ How that discretion is exercised is a matter of English law.

• The English offer may not be made after a defence has been served:

> "( 5 ) An offer to make amends under this section may not be made by a person after serving a defence in defamation proceedings brought against him by the aggrieved party in respect of the publication in question."

The comparison is confined to these four propositions. It does not follow that Hong Kong defamation law is harsher than England's at large.

6 · Why the Ordinance looks like this

Four Cap. 21 provisions carry, on the face of the official text, a note pointing at an English Act of 1952. England legislated again in 1996 and in 2013. Hong Kong's law reform body has never opened a project on the subject.

Sections 22, 25, 26 and 27 of Cap. 21 carry the notes [cf. 1952 c. 66 s. 1 U.K.], [cf. 1952 c. 66 s. 4 U.K.], [cf. 1952 c. 66 s. 5 U.K.] and [cf. 1952 c. 66 s. 6 U.K.] respectively.

The Law Reform Commission has not undertaken a project on defamation.

7 · Can sharing a post be prosecuted?

Cap. 21 contains the criminal provision the Government's answer covers — section 5. It requires two states of mind, and on the Government's own record in February 2025 there had been no prosecution under it in three years. It is not the chapter's only criminal section: sections 7, 7A, 15, 16 and 18 carry the rest of the apparatus, and the Government's answer does not reach them. ⚠ And section 5 is not the whole answer on a reposter's criminal exposure — the same Government reply also deals with offences under other Ordinances.

Section 5:

Malice, and knowledge of falsity — two states of mind, both to be established.

The Secretary for Security, in a written reply to the Legislative Council on 19 February 2025 (question 17), stated: "According to the records of the DoJ, no prosecution for “publishing libel known to be false” provided under section 5 of the Defamation Ordinance (Cap. 21) was initiated in the past three years." It covers the three years to 19 February 2025, and section 5 only. It is not a statement that nobody is ever prosecuted.

The same reply, on either side of the section 5 sentence, deals with offences under other Ordinances. It states: "Disseminating inappropriate information or making inappropriate remarks on the Internet may constitute an offence under section 64 of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) (PDPO), which provides for disclosure of personal data without consent, commonly known as the “doxxing” offence." On the figures, the reply records that since the offence came into effect in October 2021, as at 31 December 2024 the Privacy Commissioner's office had arrested 63 persons, 32 of them convicted; and that as at the third quarter of 2024 the Police had arrested 34 persons, 18 convicted, for doxxing causing specified harm under PDPO section 64(3C). It continues: "As of the third quarter of 2024, a total of 1,006 persons have been prosecuted for offences such as criminal intimidation under section 24 of the Crimes Ordinance (Cap. 200) or blackmail under section 23 of the Theft Ordinance (Cap. 210), of which 450 have been convicted." and adds a bound of its own: "The above figures include cases committed on the Internet. The Government does not maintain breakdown of online and offline figures."

The reply also states that "Making inappropriate comments online may also constitute other offences, such as contravention of the data protection principles as set out in Schedule 1 of the PDPO." and points to Crimes Ordinance section 159AAL, under which a court may order the removal of intimate images published without consent, and to PDPO section 66M, which empowers the Privacy Commissioner to demand that disclosure of doxxing content cease.

⚠ Note: each figure carries its own as-at date (31 December 2024, or the third quarter of 2024), and the reply says offences "such as" those named — a list of examples, not a complete map of criminal exposure.

The same reply set out the Government's general position: "The Internet is not an unreal world that is beyond the law. As far as the existing legislation in Hong Kong is concerned, most of the laws enacted to prevent crimes in the real world are in principle applicable to the online world, including social media and mobile communication softwares. Any illegal acts involving criminal offences would be regulated by the relevant legislation, regardless of whether such acts occur online."

So the two branches point in opposite directions: the one that carries imprisonment requires proof of two mental states and had no recorded prosecution in that window, while the one that carries damages requires neither.

8 · If a letter has already arrived

What a solicitor's letter can and cannot do, which deadlines are statutory, when an acknowledgment of a debt or other liquidated pecuniary claim can restart limitation — and why that does not reach a claim in defamation — and how a default judgment is set aside are covered in a separate guide:

• Received a lawyer's letter in Hong Kong? Which deadlines are real, and what actually follows