Australia will introduce legislation to make social media giants provide details of users who post defamatory comments, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.

The Government has been looking at the extent of the responsibility of platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, for defamatory material published on their sites and comes after the country's highest court ruled that publishers can be held liable for public comments on online forums.

The ruling caused some news companies like CNN to deny Australians access to their Facebook pages.

"The online world should not be a wild west where bots and bigots and trolls and others are anonymously going around and can harm people," Morrison said at a televised press briefing.

"That is not what can happen in the real world, and there is no case for it to be able to be happening in the digital world."

The new legislation will introduce a complaints mechanism, so that if somebody thinks they are being defamed, bullied or attacked on social media, they will be able to require the platform to take the material down.

If the content is not withdrawn, a court process could force a social media platform to provide details of the commenter.

"Digital platforms - these online companies - must have proper processes to enable the takedown of this content," Morrison said.

"They have created the space and they need to make it safe, and if they won't, we will make them (through) laws such as this."

fergie001:


SOURCE

chyckxx:
let them unmask nl trolls, bigots and red pillers. i want check something

jedisco:
Seun and Nairaland should learn from this.
Nairaland needs to do more to sanitise this place- its like a free all for cultural hate, bigotry, religious hate, woman hating e.t.c.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to go and insult folks. Most of the statements we've come to see as normal on NL will not be tolerated on FB, Twitter, Reddit e.tc which are social platforms of Western nations that champion 'free speech'. Imagine going on Facebook to say 'all British ladies are .....' But mods here allow such to flourish unchecked

Seun brandishes a disclaimer that 'everyone is responsible for what they post' but as the biggest Nigerian fora, he should know that disclaimer will not save him when law enforcement agencies come calling. Sooner or later, I expect some foreign news agencies to do an expose on the hate culture rife on Nairaland

pocohantas:
Lol. The hunter would soon become the hunted.

You will see how sanity would be restored on those platforms. Na Nairaland them go come gather.

Elsueno:
What makes social Media fun & interesting is those online trolls that pop up once in a while... remove that & watch most of these online platform become booring place full of serious people