“It’s absolutely outrageous,” said Dr Sacha Molitorisz, a researcher at the Centre for Media Transition at UTS, which has backed the ACCC’s call for a regulatory overhaul.
“There needs to be regulatory accountability for sharing content that is inciting violence, that is inciting hatred,” he said.
“If you’re Sky News, and you’re publishing news that does those things, then you should be accountable for it. But similarly, if you’re a social media platform, or you’re a search engine or you’re in the digital space, you also need to have some sort of accountability.
“This is what regulators in Australia need to tackle, and they need to get on with it quickly.”
As part of its Digital Platforms Inquiry, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission called on the federal government to overhaul the patchwork of regulations that now governs Australia’s media and internet industries, “to effectively and consistently regulate the conduct of all entities which perform comparable functions in the production and delivery of content in Australia”.
The ACCC proposed that there should be “meaningful sanctions” for entities that breach the laws, regardless of whether they’re online companies such as Facebook, or more traditional media companies.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims told The Australian Financial Review he “can see that [the draft recommendation] could have some relevance” to the latest Facebook scandal, but it’s “indirect, not direct”.
His inquiry was originally set up to look into the impact of online search engines, social media and digital content aggregators on competition in the media and advertising services markets. It’s not due to make its final recommendations until June 30.
Facebook, which once went by the company slogan “Move Fast and Break Things”, refused to respond to the Financial Review question of whether it should now be regulated, following its repeated failure over many years to self-regulate.
Chris Sonderby, Facebook’s deputy general counsel, issued a statement pointing out that no Facebook users reported the Christchurch terrorist’s video during the live broadcast.
“Including the views during the live broadcast, the video was viewed about 4000 times in total before being removed from Facebook,” the statement said.
Positive contributions
Dr Maxine Newlands, a senior lecturer in political science and international relations at Queensland’s James Cook University, said that regulators need to take care not to forget about the positive contributions that social media once made to democracy, if and when they decide to crack down on Facebook and other social media publishers.
Though it’s often used for “digital dictatorship” nowadays, social media used to be about “digital democracy”, and it could still help to give voice to the voiceless, she said.
Figuring out which voiceless segments of the community to give voice to was the problem, she said, and it was clear that social media companies such as Facebook should no longer be giving voice to terrorists.
As it stands, while Sky News is subject to regulation from ACMA, Facebook is under the purview of Australia’s Office of the eSafety Commissioner, which can only issue take-down notices.
But even the ePrivacy Commissioner has called on social media companies to do more to protect the public, especially children, from the content often found on social media sites.
“Content that is clearly and unambiguously illegal under Australian law should be removed proactively by technology firms,” the eSafety Commissioner said in its draft Online Statement Guidelines.
“The burden of safety should not fall wholly on the user. Technology firms have control over the content hosted or made accessible on their sites, apps and platforms, and they can take preventative steps to guard against their services being used to facilitate or encourage illegal content or conduct or inappropriate behaviours.”
with Paul Smith
from Credence news https://ift.tt/2ugfwxq
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