Cowards palace PM slams social media giants and anonymous trolls
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed social media giants for providing a âcowardâs palaceâ for anonymous trolls to abuse people online, as he foreshadowed a further crackdown on the tech industry.
Mr Morrison took aim at the âlack of accountabilityâ by the tech giants in enabling hate speech, saying the government would be âleaning further into this issueâ.
âSocial media has become a cowardâs palace, where people can just go on there, not say who they are, destroy peopleâs lives and say the most foul and offensive things to people, and do so with impunity. Now thatâs not a free country where that happens,â Mr Morrison said on Thursday.
âThey should have to identify who they are. And, you know, the companies if theyâre not going to say who they are, well theyâre not a platform anymore, theyâre a publisher. Theyâre a publisher, and you know what the implications of that means in terms of those issues.
âPeople should be responsible for what they say in a country that believes in free speech. That issue is, and the technology that enables it, and the lack of accountability that sits around it, is just not on. You can expect us to be leaning even further into this.â
In a ruling last month, the High Court found in the Voller case that media outlets are legally responsible as âpublishersâ for third partiesâ comments on their Facebook pages even if they were not aware of the comments. The decision has implications for all social media users and particularly those who run pages. It has prompted federal attorney-general Michaelia Cash to urge states and territories to pursue urgent defamation law reform, telling The Australian the Voller decision presents a âconsiderable liabilityâ for all publishers.
Mr Morrison said Australia had led the world in its attempts to regulate the tech giants, passing legislation this year to force Facebook and Google to strike content deals with news organisations. The eSafety commissioner, billed by the government as a world-first agency solely concerned with online safety, was also given beefed-up powers this year to crack down on the tech giants when it comes to stopping trolling and cyber-abuse.
âWe intend to set the pace. We value our free society. And in a free society, you canât be a coward and attack people and expect not to be held accountable for it,â he said.
It comes amid a damaging week for Facebook, as former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen accused the company of putting âprofits before peopleâ and knowingly harming users in testimony to the US Congress, which spurred a bipartisan push to regulate the tech giants. Her testimony, which was heavily rejected by Facebook, was informed by troves of documents she complied before leaving the company in May. It included research showing Facebook knew its sister site Instagram was intensifying body image and mental health issues among young girls.
A Facebook spokesman said the company was engaging with the industry and governments on defamation law reform.
âWe support modernisation of Australiaâs uniform defamation laws and hope for greater clarity and certainty in this area. Recent court decisions have reaffirmed the need for such law reform, and weâve taken steps to introduce new controls to support users managing conversations on Facebook,â the company said.
Facebook, which also owns Instagram, said the company had developed multiple ways to identify and remove underage users and had thousands of staff dedicated to reviewing accounts for violating its rules, as well as AI technology to find and remove accounts belonging to underage users.
âOver the past three months, weâve removed more than 600,000 Instagram accounts that were unable to meet our minimum age requirement,â the spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for Twitter said anonymity was not a shield against violations of its Terms of Service.
âTwitter will take action against any accounts that are in violation of the Twitter Rules. There is no room for abuse and harassment on our platform, and we make ongoing investments in this area to keep our users safe,â the spokeswoman said.
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Lisa Visentin is a federal political reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, covering education and communications.Connect via Twitter or email.
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