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Australia Passes Law To Punish Social Media Companies For Violent Posts (theguardian.com) 259

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."
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Australia Passes Law To Punish Social Media Companies For Violent Posts

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  • by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:05AM (#58383024)

    Or prove that heavy metal music, or video games cause violence.

    Does the Koran cause violence?

    • Evil people will do evil things on their own, but it takes religion to make a good man do evil things.

      • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:41AM (#58383210)
        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.
      • by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:29AM (#58383484)

        This is utter flapping bullshit. Religion is not the problem, never has been.

        Evil people are evil, they just USE religion as an excuse to be or act out what they ALREADY ARE! You don't need religion to justify it either, secular people have no problem murdering, hurting, trash talking, abusing, and marginalizing other people just the same as people with a religion.

        At the very end there is only 1 religion. the religion of you trying to make people live the way you want them to... its called society... that IS the religion and the only one that exists. You can center it around 1 god, multiple gods, no gods, or humans. It is all the same... people coming up with some excuse, scheme, idea, policy, law, regulation, or rule people have to follow to be accepted into that society or risk getting excluded. Every religion and non-religious group has jails and a desire to put anyone they decide they do not like in jails so they are out of society.

        Saying religion is the root of all evil when it is actually just "humans" being evil just shows that you have a nasty bias that creates a serious deficit of intellectual honesty in your logic!

        • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
          Religion provides a justification for some heinous acts... but this can also apply to any situation where someone in a position of power is instructing others (who willfully follow) to do a certain action.

          The root cause is that there are just too many humans on the planet that are satisfied letting someone else tell them what to believe. As long as our species is this way, there will always be a select few who take advantage of it.
        • by stealth_finger ( 1809752 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @11:27AM (#58383886)

          Saying religion is the root of all evil when it is actually just "humans" being evil just shows that you have a nasty bias that creates a serious deficit of intellectual honesty in your logic!

          Yeah but it's a lot easier when you can say 'This is gods plan' or 'god told me to do it' or 'its in the fucking bible' and move responsibility rather than take it yourself. Being a dick to others it literally codified in the books. Yes, people are dicks, but religious people are generally bigger ones.

        • Saying religion is the root of all evil when it is actually just "humans" being evil just shows that you have a nasty bias that creates a serious deficit of intellectual honesty in your logic!

          It's religion that has a serious deficit of intellectual honesty, and logic... and those deficits are inherent. Religion turns well-meaning people into evil people by giving them a sense of justness which they do not deserve. It teaches people to make decisions on specious bases, and to feel smug about them, which is why it's inherently harmful.

          • by sinij ( 911942 )

            Saying religion is the root of all evil when it is actually just "humans" being evil just shows that you have a nasty bias that creates a serious deficit of intellectual honesty in your logic!

            It's religion that has a serious deficit of intellectual honesty, and logic... and those deficits are inherent. Religion turns well-meaning people into evil people by giving them a sense of justness which they do not deserve. It teaches people to make decisions on specious bases, and to feel smug about them, which is why it's inherently harmful.

            Are we still talking about Bible or is this now about Social Justice issues. I seriously cannot tell.

          • Replace Religion with Progressivism. No noticeable difference in truthiness.

        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @12:22PM (#58384220)

          This is utter flapping bullshit. Religion is not the problem, never has been.

          No *that* is bullshit. Religion while not the only problem most definitely is a big problem. People aren't born evil. They don't pass through the vagina with a leather jacket, knuckleduster in hand and swastika tattoos and crosses. Being evil is something that is learned.

          Religion is an appeal of authority from an unknown force. That authority is used to radicalise and mold people's beliefs. That very authority is incompatible with the idea that any other authority can exist which is why fundamentally all religions claim they are the one true religion and that false worshipers are enemies.

          In many cases it is the existence of religion itself which has made people evil. It is the authority of religion that has caused evil people to spread evil unto others. And above all, a great many evil acts have been done *in the name of* religion, not "excused by", "not in defense of" but actively "in the name of" religion.

          Religion isn't the root of all evils. It is however a hell of a big contributor as both the source and the spread of evil.

          By the way you need to die infidel. My holy book has said so and my holy man decreed it so, and he has the backing of god so therefore he can't be evil. Now come heather so I can do the will of god and rid the world of your evil.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            Your example is interesting since the Koran defines Christians and Jews as NOT infidels.

            Crazy finds an excuse. If not the Koran, it'll be the White Album or the Slender Man. Kinison was right, Manson would have gotten the same thing from the Monkees. Stalin's deal was eliminating religion (and more or less turning the state into a religion).

            Hitler, like many politicians today, paid lip service to religion when it suited his goals but showed no signs of actual belief.

            TL;DR; I believe you have cause and effec

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by harrkev ( 623093 )

        The "official religion" of Communism is atheism. How many millions did they kill?

        • by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @11:51AM (#58384010)
          Atheism is as much a religion as turning off the TV is a TV channel.

          The official religion of Communism, which has pretty much all the qualities of a religion, is Communism itself.
          This is pretty evident by the fact that virtually all of the great communist leaders have had themselves elevated to a godlike status as the fathers of the nation. They created huge personality cults around themselves, which celebrated them in various ways not unlike some kind of religious guru figure.
          This is probably also the main reason why communist leaders persecuted other religion, because they wanted citizens to have no other gods besides of themselves.
          • While not a "religion" per se, atheism is just as much a faith as any religion.

            Logically, you cannot prove a negative (other than disproving every other possible case), meaning you can't prove that there is no god. So the only logically supportable belief is agnosticism - you are uncertain if a god does or does not exist. To take that extra step to atheism - being convinced that there is no god - requires a leap of faith.

            Your TV analogy doesn't work because it's trivial to observe that the TV is off
          • This is a very good point about religion, and specifically monotheism. It was the belief in a single non-human (or "sky" as the uninformed say) god that dismantled the general principle that leaders of cities/kingdoms/territories themselves were gods. In this manner, civilization was able to derive principles from concepts higher than human power.

            In this day and age, it is of the utmost importance for the communist types not only to profess atheism, but also to ridicule theist religion. Faith in a deity rat

        • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          Not as much as Capitalism that's for sure.

          Communism is a reaction to the horrors of being a poor worker under the Capitalist system. It wouldn't exist if Capitalism is all rainbows and ponies.

      • but it takes religion to make a good man do evil things

        Then add Christians to the list of "good men doing evil":

        • The Crusades
        • The Rhineland Massacres
        • The Irish Republican army

        and more.

        I was born and raised Christian. Long ago, I disavowed Christianity out of shame for the evil done by Christians.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Since when did proof have anything to do with politics?
    • Or prove that heavy metal music, or video games cause violence.

      Does the Koran cause violence?

      I'd say there's a lot more evidence for your last one there ...

    • by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:06AM (#58383354)
      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.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      First: I don't support this law at all.

      That said, it is actually well understood that violent imagery does cause violence in some people, i.e. those with under-developed mental tools to process and understand such things, e.g. children. There is a scientific, well researched reason for having an 18 certificate on some movies, for example.

      Facebook might be been in a better position if it had made the minimum age 18, but instead it made it 13 so now has to make sure everything on there is suitable for a 13 ye

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The law is inherently broken. Just because you have video of an incident does not mean the incident occurred. Take a typical action move, chock a block full of abhorrent content, which you can be fined for, until you can prove, legally prove it is fake. Flip side for real abhorrent content, it is by law, not real until it is proven to be real in a court of law.

        Quite simply it is up to the state to prove it is real prior to demanding a social media site take it down. How do you separate real from fake but i

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It is dumb, although not because of the real/fake issue.

          What is the goal here? Surely it's to prevent people becoming either radicalized or traumatized. In either case, the danger is rarely from people posting this kind of extreme content, it's from less extreme stuff that leads them to it. So they aren't even targeting the right thing.

          Not that is has much hope of working anyway. In the wake of the Christchurch far-right terror attack Facebook removed over a million copies of the terrorist's video. The prob

    • by dbialac ( 320955 )

      So now videos of 9/11 are illegal in Australia?

  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:05AM (#58383026)
    I'm sure that this will work out perfectly fine and absolutely no unintended consequences will arise [bbc.com] as a result.
    • by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Zukerberg is nervously asking his lawyers if there is an extradition treaty between Australia and the US.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      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.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        According to the French government (quoted in the link) Twitter is not complying with the law at all, they are just doing it to try to force the government to back down.

        It is of course up to Twitter if they want to try that, but I doubt it's going to work. Give it a few months and they will have set up an office to handle this stuff, since political tweets are a significant source of revenue.

        • According to the French government (quoted in the link) Twitter is not complying with the law at all, they are just doing it to try to force the government to back down.

          And according to Twitter, they are complying with the law. Since neither Twitter nor the French government has any credibility with thinking people since they are both hypocritical AF, it's difficult to imagine what is gained by playing "he said, she said".

        • If they are required to censor everything that might interfere with an election, that's what they do.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            They aren't. Not sure where you got that from... The law says that political ads must be properly attributed.

            The ads in question are just encouraging people to vote and don't count under the wording of the law. They are not partisan or attempting to influence the vote in any way, merely encouraging participation.

            Twitter just doesn't want the hassle of verifying the identities of people buying political ads, the lazy buggers.

    • 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.

      • I assume it's because then juries would often go, "These laws are fucking stupid" or "he's not guilty of most of this." and acquit him, can't have that now.

    • I'm sure that this will work out perfectly fine and absolutely no unintended consequences will arise [bbc.com] as a result.

      Yep ...

      But it argued that the public information message, simply asking people to register to vote, should not count as a "political campaign".

      What the "good" people want is never politics, of course. It's just plain common sense, ya know.

  • Punchable face (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ruddk ( 5153113 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:07AM (#58383036)

    So is it enough if you comment that someone has a “punchable face”? ;)

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      If the target is a politician, sure.

    • If so, would just using the German phrase "backpfeifengesicht" get around it? (literally means "a face in need of a punch/slap)
  • Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:17AM (#58383088)

    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....

  • by danbuter ( 2019760 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:22AM (#58383112)
    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.
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:36AM (#58383186)
      Facebook, Google and Twitter are not "the internet". It's people's laziness that results in the web being distilled down into a single purveyor of search, porn, instant messaging, social media, etc. Logically governments everywhere like to apply force to these natural choke-points. But the internet is much, much more than these few sites and just like you can still download any show, movie or program you want even today, you will always be able to do what you want to do online. You will just have to be less lazy about it.
      • But the internet is much, much more than these few sites and just like you can still download any show, movie or program you want even today, you will always be able to do what you want to do online.

        But it will be a lot harder to find other people that have what you want. If it were easy, government could simply use the same path to find and block your activity.

      • Hard to have "social" media if you and your friends are all on different platforms.
        • That was one of the best features of windowsphone, it had this people page that all of your contact you had social media links to would also display. Facebook, twitter, etc all on one page, it was really nice.

      • you will always be able to do what you want to do online. You will just have to be less lazy about it.

        What if I want to be lazy? CHECKMATE.

        Governments have no business making people who provide a forum police that forum, unless they explicitly endorse the views promoted in that forum. This is nothing less than an attack on free speech, by attempting to shut down the places where it occurs.

    • We are living in the golden age of the open internet. I doubt that the open internet will cease to exist. However, I expect a new sanitized internet to be a form of a walled garden that keeps users from the open internet.

      China's model probably will not be the exact model as the Chinese model requires a very large staff of monitors. However, a similar model using AI to identify troublesome text and images can be done.

      As in China, there will always be workarounds that allow access to the open internet; howev

      • It's already being done. Twitter, YouTube, etc already hide "objectional" or "conspiracy" content. YouTube also de-monetizes anyone who says the wrong things.
  • Kneejerk Move (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dcw3 ( 649211 )

    Sorry Australia, but you got this one wrong. Your well intentioned emotional response to a tragic event is gonna bite you in the ass.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    All all is fixed and everything is rainbows and lollipops without any unintended consequences and it's hate speech for everyone else but OK speech for us. Yay, we're in la la land now!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I remember seeing movies of gross and violent murder, mass shootings, corpses piled up.

    Something tells me these will not be banned.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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 t

  • Austrailia is so fucked. I feel sorry for the citizens..

  • I was worried about all the fake news, hate speech, and abhorrent violent material that was appearing on the internet, but now they've passed a law - that should solve all problems.

  • If only there were large platforms capable of having a large carefully selected panel of people connect to them and look at media to determine in a fair and balanced way whether content is 'violent' or not.
  • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:59AM (#58383316)

    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?

    • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      So, now we are outlawing specific kinds of speech? Danger is close.

      No. It is already here wreaking havoc.

      Where I'm all for avoiding things like yelling "fire in a theater" or "inflaming an actual riot"

      I'd like to address this, as it is often used as an example of a restriction on freedom of speech. It is not.

      "Freedom of speech" is not synonymous with "freedom from judgement of the consequences of your speech". "Fire in a theater" is ok. . . if the theater is nearly empty, or everyone ignores me. But, if there are people trampled in a mad rush for the door, then that happened as a consequence of my actions, just as sure as if I had stood at the front and started

      • But, if there are people trampled in a mad rush for the door, then that happened as a consequence of my actions, just as sure as if I had stood at the front and started shooting at the crowd.

        Nonsense. If you're shooting at the crowd then people are dying because you shot them. That's direct culpability. If people get trampled in a mad rush for the door, you neither trampled them yourself nor forced anyone else to do so. The people who did the trampling are responsible for those deaths. If they had simply exited the theater in a calm and civilized manner—which is the correct response whether or not the fire is real—then no one would have gotten hurt. By lying about the existence of a

    • Interesting thing that, "fire in a theatre" quote. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] it is a paraphrasing of the opinion of a Justice in the U.S. Supreme Court and was originally, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."

      The interesting part, to me at least, is that we essentially have the same problem. Someone is knowingly giving false information which could result in someone else taking action based on it. In this case the internet

  • by Dog-Cow ( 21281 ) on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:14AM (#58383404)

    What is the connection with illegal material? Is it illegal to video an illegal act being performed?

  • Because they never pay.

  • ... the 24 hour Barney* and Friends channel.

    *Not sure if there is an acceptable native Australian character, as everything down under eventually tries to kill you.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Australia passes law to punish car makers for the bumper stickers drivers put on their cars?
  • So basically if there is an audio and/or video showing terrorism, murder, attempted murder, rape, torture, or kidnap and it isn't for political, legal, research (scientific, academic, historic, medical), artistic use or for the news accessible to Australians then the company/individual hosting the file, no matter where in the world they are, has to inform the authorities and remove access to Australians.

    The content has to be produced by someone involved with the act in order for it to be removed. 434.31 (1

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