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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."
Or prove that heavy metal music, or video games cause violence.
Does the Koran cause violence?
I'm sure that this will work out perfectly fine and absolutely no unintended consequences will arise as a result.
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....
The internet was a lot of fun, guys. Sadly, it's been taken over and you will only be allowed to view government-approved content in the future.
There is but it doesn't matter; the act has to be a crime in both nations for it to qualify for extradition.
So, now we are outlawing specific kinds of speech? Danger is close.
Tread lightly. It's a really slippery slope when you start down this path and something I suggest we weigh carefully before reacting emotionally.
Where I'm all for avoiding things like yelling "fire in a theater" or "inflaming an actual riot" it's going to put us way out on the slippery slope to do this. I wonder if the risks are worth the sacrifice of freedom, if we can craft a narrow enough rule to fix the actual problem without sliding into full censorship... I'm not sure we can.
So, what rule are you suggesting here? Specifically what and what isn't allowed? What's the problem we are trying to fix?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.'"
Australia is run by a Murdoch-backed right wing government. But don't let that stop you pretending it's the "left" because they want to take... uh your right to die outside a hospital you can't afford to use away.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.