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Australia Passes Law To Punish Social Media Companies For Violent Posts (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Australia passed sweeping legislation Thursday that threatens huge fines for social media companies and jail for their executives (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) if they fail to rapidly remove "abhorrent violent material" from their platforms. The law -- strongly opposed by the tech industry -- puts Australia at the forefront of a global movement to hold companies like Facebook and YouTube accountable for the content they host. It comes less than a month after a gunman, believed to be an Australian white nationalist, distributed a hate-filled manifesto online before using Facebook to live-stream the massacre of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Written quickly and without much input from technology companies or experts, the measure goes as far as any other democracy's attempt to punish multinational tech platforms for the behavior of their users. "The legislation criminalizes 'abhorrent violent material,' which it defines as videos that show terrorist attacks, murders, rape or kidnapping. Social media companies that fail to remove such content 'expeditiously' could face fines of up to 10 percent of their annual profit, and employees could be sentenced to up to three years in prison," the report adds. "Companies must also inform the police when illegal material is found."
"This law, which was conceived and passed in five days without any meaningful consultation, does nothing to address hate speech, which was the fundamental motivation for the tragic Christchurch terrorist attacks," said Sunita Bose, the managing director of the Digital Industry Group, an advocacy group representing Facebook, Google and other companies. "With the vast volumes of content uploaded to the internet every second, this is a highly complex problem that requires discussion with the technology industry, legal experts, the media and civil society to get the solution right -- that didn't happen this week."
"This law, which was conceived and passed in five days without any meaningful consultation, does nothing to address hate speech, which was the fundamental motivation for the tragic Christchurch terrorist attacks," said Sunita Bose, the managing director of the Digital Industry Group, an advocacy group representing Facebook, Google and other companies. "With the vast volumes of content uploaded to the internet every second, this is a highly complex problem that requires discussion with the technology industry, legal experts, the media and civil society to get the solution right -- that didn't happen this week."
So is it enough if you comment that someone has a “punchable face”? ;)
L'Idiot
Almost everything native to Australia is poisonous and deadly, and they have nonsense like this now?
I think the country itself, the very land, is trying to get rid of all the humans living there....
Correct reaction by Twitter.
You force me to comply with your law, I will comply with your law. And if I don't like that law, I will comply in the way that fucks you the most.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Every time some tragedy happens like this, you get various conspiracy nuts out and about claiming it was some sort of false-flag. Now, when you have extensive video, like this case, it is easy to debunk. Due to the video & the manifesto the shooter produced, we clearly see who committed this crime, and his motivations behind it. If you want to actually prevent these sorts of attacks in the future, you need to understand why people do these things, and actually address the issues they bring up, rather than stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it doesn't exist.
But if you have a government activity trying to shut down those sorts of videos, and not let people see what actually happened . . . well that is just going to encourage the conspiracy types. And honestly make me think that the Australian government plans on using this law to hide stuff.
I get the sentiment behind the remark, but the truth is that it takes surprisingly little to get a good (or perhaps just regular) person to do evil. Milgram showed that all you needed was someone in authority telling you that it was okay, and although it wasn't a methodologically sound study, the Stanford prison experiment suggests that people might be willing to assume that mantel of authority all by themselves and act out the evil they believe is expected of them.
I look at religion not as cosmic truth, but as early human attempts to keep people from evil. It's certainly as susceptible to corruption as much as any institution, and definitely a tool for controlling a population, but humans are downright savage. If we appear nice and moral today, it's thanks to progress and an abundance of resources. Remove that and we'd be at each other's throats in short order.
There will be only intended consequences. These lawmakers might not know a volt from a vault or a wire from a fire but they do have people who can explain to them that this is totally unworkable in practice. But it will create opportunities for selective enforcement, which governments absolutely adore.
You can tell there are too many laws when the police have discretion as to who to cite, and who not to. Every major society has too many laws for actual justice to survive. If prosecution is not required for every offense, it means that there's too many offenses.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I usually avoid these topics. But allow me a bit of whataboutery here (well not exactly that).
These are the post 9/11 reactionary measures that governments are pushing all around the world after being empowered by such tragedies. A most disgusting method if you ask me.
And in the face of such events, where fear is still at its peak, it is also the best situation for political parties and or governments to propose and push through the erosion of our liberties. People are likely to cheer for them and shut up critical discourse with platitudes.