The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has decided to exclude messages on online interactive forums from a post-use filing requirement for all member firms in response to comments it received from the securities industry, according to a filing it submitted with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late December.

The financial industry regulator has been treating interactive posts on social media sites as companies' "public appearances," which must be supervised even though no filing requirements were necessary.

Based on the proposal withdrawal, these type of interactive posts will no longer be considered as public appearances and will only be treated as correspondence between the securities companies and subscribers to such online forums.

Although FINRA said in its filing that it disagreed with the argument that online posts are unlike public appearances as these postings remain available to the public for an extended time period, it nevertheless agreed to exclude them from the filing requirement.

Last August, FINRA issued an 8-page release to further elaborate on issues it highlighted in a previous regulatory notice on the use of social media by member firms. Some of the issues presented in the guidance arise from confusion among companies in regard to recordkeeping of communications through social media Websites, companies' supervision roles to enforce appropriate use of the media, and deterrence of the addition of links to non-credible third-party Websites.