On Thursday, Australia lawmakers ushered through what is perhaps the toughest legal measures to hold social media companies accountable for the content they share. Only a few weeks after the massacre of 50 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Australia’s House of Representatives passed a law requiring social media platforms to “expeditiously” remove content that shows kidnapping, murders, rape, or terrorist attacks. If the platforms fail to get rid of the content in a timely fashion employees could face prison time in Australia and companies could be subject to fines of up to 10% of their annual profit. “These platforms should not be weaponized for these purposes,” Christan Porter, Australia’s attorney general, was quoted as saying in a New York Times report. “Internet platforms must take the spread of abhorrent violent material online seriously,” he added. The law puts Australia at the center of a contentious debate around free speech, censorship, and content moderation that’s now raging across the globe. India has also proposed measures to limit the spread of misinformation on social media platforms, which has given rise to questions about whether the laws are tantamount to censorship of speech that the ruling power might find offensive. And the European Union has said that social media platforms are struggling to comply with the regulations it enacted in 2016 and 2017 to combat hate speech. Already, the advocacy group that represents Facebook, Google, and other companies is speaking out against the regulations in Australia.<doc-sep>Australia’s government rushed the legislation through the last two days that Parliament sits before elections are expected in May, dispensing with the usual procedure of a committee scrutinizing its content first. “Together we must act to ensure that perpetrators and their accomplices cannot leverage online platforms for the purpose of spreading their violent and extreme propaganda — these platforms should not be weaponized for evil,” Attorney General Christian Porter told Parliament while introducing the bill. The opposition’s spokesman on the attorney general portfolio, Mark Dreyfus, committed his center-left Labor Party to support the bill despite misgivings. If the Labor wins the election, the law would be reviewed by a parliamentary committee. The law has made it a crime for social media platforms not to remove “abhorrent violent material” quickly. The crime would be punishable by three years in prison and a fine of 10.5 million Australian dollars ($7.5 million), or 10% of the platform’s annual turnover, whichever is larger. Abhorrent violent material is defined as acts of terrorism, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape and kidnapping. The material must be recorded by the perpetrator or an accomplice for the law to apply. Platforms anywhere in the world would face fines of up to AU$840,000 ($597,500) if they fail to notify Australian Federal Police if they are aware their service was streaming “abhorrent violent conduct” occurring in Australia. Dreyfus described the bill as “clumsy and flawed,” and the timetable to pass it as “ridiculous.” Labor first saw the legislation late Monday. The bill could potentially undermine Australia’s security cooperation with the United States by requiring U.S. internet providers to share content data with Australian Federal Police in breach of U.S. law, Dreyfus said. The Digital Industry Group Inc. — an association representing the digital industry in Australia including Facebook, Google and Twitter — said taking down abhorrent content was a “highly complex problem” that required consultation with a range of experts which the government had not done. “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,” the group’s managing director Sunita Bose said in a statement. “This creates a strict internet intermediary liability regime that is out of step with the notice-and-takedown regimes in Europe and the United States, and is therefore bad for internet users as it encourages companies to proactively surveil the vast volumes of user-generated content being uploaded at any given minute,” Bose added. Arthur Moses, president of the Australian Law Council, the nation’s top lawyers group, said the law could lead to media censorship and prevent whistleblowers from using social media to shine a light on atrocities because of social media companies’ fear of prosecution. “Media freedom and whistleblowing of atrocities here and overseas have been put at risk by the ill-informed livestream laws passed by the Federal Parliament,” Moses said. The penalties would be “bad for certainty and bad for business,” which could scare off online business investment in Australia, Moses said. Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox, a leading business advocate, said more time was required to ensure the law did not unnecessarily impinge on existing fundamental media rights and freedoms. Scott Farquhar, co-founder of the Sydney-based software company Atlassian, predicted job losses in the technology industry. “As of today, any person working at any company (globally) that allows users to upload videos or images could go to jail,” Farquhar tweeted. “Guilty until proven innocent.” Fergus Hanson, head of the International Cyber Policy Center at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, saw problems in the legislation’s definitions, including how long a company had to “expeditiously” remove offense material. Facebook livestreamed the Christchurch massacre for 17 minutes without interruption before reacting. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the shootings during the first 24 hours afterward. It was filmed by Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, whose video and writings included anti-Muslim views and detailed how he planned the attack. Tarrant is scheduled to appear in court Friday and will face 50 murder and 38 attempted murder charges, according to New Zealand police. Executives of Facebook, Google, Twitter, internet service providers and Australian phone companies met Prime Minister Scott Morrison and three ministers last week to discuss social media regulation. Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said Facebook “did not present any immediate solutions to the issues arising out of the horror that occurred in Christchurch.” Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg used an op-ed in The Washington Post last week to invite a more active role by governments and regulators to deal the harmful online content. “The rules governing the internet allowed a generation of entrepreneurs to build services that changed the world and created a lot of value in people’s lives,” Zuckerberg wrote. “It’s time to update these rules to define clear responsibilities for people, companies and governments going forward.” Morrison wants to take the Australian law to a Group of 20 countries forum as a model for holding social media companies to account. New Zealand’s Justice Minister Andrew Little said his government had also made a commitment to review the role of social media and the obligations of the companies that provide the platforms. He said he had asked officials to look at the effectiveness of current hate speech laws and whether there were gaps that need to be filled. Little said he didn’t see any irony in that people were watching hearings into a bill that would place new restrictions on guns in real time on Facebook, the same platform the shooter used to broadcast the massacre. “There’s a world of difference, I think, between the exercise of a democratic function and a democratic institution like a national parliament, and some of the more toxic stuff that you see put out by individuals,” he said.<doc-sep>Getty Twitter Co-Founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey. Parliament has approved new laws that will make it a crime to host or stream “abhorrent violent material”. The laws were proposed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday and some are concerned they’ve been rushed through. Atlassian cofounder Scott Farquhar said the laws lack details and believes they will damage the Australian tech industry. The Coalition government’s new social media laws could have a significant impact on the way in which platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube operate in Australia. The Criminal Code Amendment Bill is designed to prevent social media platforms from being “weaponised” after the gunman behind the Christchurch attack used Facebook’s live-streaming service to broadcast himself killing 50 people. But there are serious concerns that the new legislation has been rushed, and that it will have unintended consequences on the Australian tech industry. The proposed legislation was only formally announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday, and the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI), which represents Facebook, Google and Twitter, received the draft legislation on Tuesday. The Bill passed the Senate on Wednesday with no objection from the opposition and it was approved by Parliament on Thursday. Several Labor MPs complained about the legislation, including Bill Shorten, but approved it anyway. Under the new legislation, people working for content-sharing companies can be fined or jailed for three years for hosting or streaming what the government is calling “abhorrent violent material”. That includes terrorist attacks, murders or rapes. Social media giants can also incur fines of up to 10% of their annual turnover if they fail to remove violent content “expeditiously”. It is unclear what “expeditiously” means in regards to an actual timeline. In response to the passing of the bill, Sunita Bose, director of DIGI, said in a statement: 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. In fact, the only legal definition of hate speech we have under Australian law does not include religious and gender-based speech. Let’s be clear: no one wants abhorrent content on their websites, and DIGI members work to take this down as quickly as possible. But 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 creates a strict internet intermediary liability regime that is out of step with the notice-and-takedown regimes in Europe and the United States, and is therefore bad for internet users as it encourages companies to proactively surveil the vast volumes of user-generated content being uploaded at any given minute. This ‘pass it now, change it later’ approach to legislation, such as we saw with the encryption law, creates immediate uncertainty for Australia’s technology industry. It threatens employees within any company that has user-generated content to be potentially jailed for the misuse of their services — even if they are unaware of it. This is not how legislation should be made in a democracy like Australia. Whichever party forms government must commit to taking this law to urgent review by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) as soon as Parliament reconvenes. A Google spokesperson said: “We have zero tolerance for terrorist content on our platforms. Over the last few years we have invested heavily in human review teams and smart technology that helps us quickly detect, review, and remove this type of content. We are committed to leading the way in developing new technologies and standards for identifying and removing terrorist content. We are working with government agencies, law enforcement and across industry, including as a founding member of the Global Internet Forum To Counter Terrorism, to keep this type of content off our platforms. We will continue to engage on this crucial issue.” Scott Farquhar, the cofounder of software giant Atlassian, Australia’s biggest tech company, raised his concerns about the legislation on Twitter. “As of today, any person working at any company (globally) that allows users to upload videos or images could go to jail,” he wrote. “Guilty until proven innocent. They need to violate users privacy to police this. Whistleblowers highlighting human rights abuses aren’t excluded.” On Wednesday, Farquhar said: “Let me be clear, no-one wants this material on the internet. But the legislation is flawed and will unnecessarily cost jobs and damage our tech industry. Farquhar pointed out that as the legislation is currently written, it applies to “news sites, social media sites, dating sites, job sites — anywhere user content could be created.” He also said it lacks details, saying it’s not clear “who” in a company that breached the rules would go to jail. Sad to report the poor, rushed legislation covering "Streamed Terrorism" passed both houses just now – despite objections from bodies as diverse as @newscorpaus NewsCorp, the tech industry & @thelawcouncil (3 who rarely agree!) ???? Another sad day for Aus tech & govt. #auspol — Mike Cannon-Brookes ????????‍???????? (@mcannonbrookes) April 4, 2019 Alex McCauley, CEO of StartupAUS, said: “The haste and lack of consultation with which this legislation has been created is a real concern,” adding that there’s a trend towards jumping into anti tech legislation in a knee jerk fashion.” McCauley added: “This legislation was drafted and rushed through the Senate in less than three weeks. That’s not enough time to get it right. There has been virtually no consultation, which has led to a poor piece of legislation. Nowhere is this clearer than the fact that the proposed law doesn’t include a public interest exemption — something that is deeply concerning. “In the years ahead, there are many thorny regulatory questions that emerging technologies are going to throw up. We need to be thoughtful and deliberate about how we approach those issues. That means engaging in consultation with industry, upskilling lawmakers on existing and emerging technologies, and doing some forward planning about what’s coming and how we can sensibly respond. If we rush it, we’ll get it wrong. We then run the risk of hurting a promising Australian industry while simultaneously failing to protect the public adequately.” The Morrison government also wanted to change Australia’s encryption laws so that law enforcement agencies could more easily access communications on platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage. But a committee reviewing proposed changes to Australia’s encryption laws could not agree on further changes, IT News reported on Thursday. Here is the committee’s report. Business Insider Emails & Alerts Site highlights each day to your inbox. Email Address Join Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.<doc-sep>
Lawmakers in Australia passed new legislation on Thursday to hold social media companies accountable for the spread of hate content on their platforms. With its implementation, companies such as Facebook and YouTube could be subject to huge fines, and their executives threatened with jail time, if they do not ensure the “expeditious” removal of inappropriate material. The Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material bill was enacted following criticism of social media for enabling the live broadcast of last month’s Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacres, allegedly carried out by an Australian man, that left 50 dead. Platforms struggled to remove the content even after the initial broadcast was taken down. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for governments and regulators to play a more active role in suppressing harmful content. But the Australian legislation has been criticized for being too rushed and drawn without necessary consultation with tech companies and other stakeholders. There is also concern, just as there has been with other countries stepping up efforts to limit the exposure of sensitive content online, that it could censor legitimate speech. It has been reported that lawmakers in the U.K. are also considering introducing legislation that would aim to hold social media companies accountable for content carried on their platforms. According to the Guardian, the U.K. government is expected to publish plans on Monday to legislate for a duty of care by social media companies, which would be enforced by an independent regulator. What does the new bill stipulate? According to the legislation, forms of media depicting terrorism, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape and kidnapping, whether set within or outside Australia, is considered “abhorrent violent conduct” and must be removed from social media platforms. Failure to do so “expeditiously” — an exact time frame is not specified — could lead to companies having to pay a hefty fine of up to 10% of their annual profit, and employees imprisoned for up to three years. The bill seeks to ensure that online platforms “cannot be exploited and weaponized by perpetrators of violence,” according to a memorandum published on the Australian parliament website. What are Australian politicians saying? Christian Porter, a member of the Liberal Party, which governs the country as part of a coalition, said the bill “represents an important step” in ensuring that perpetrators do not use online platforms “for the purposes of spreading their violent and extreme fanatical propaganda.” But many, including independent member of parliament Kerryn Phelps, criticized the rushed timeline with which the bill was pushed through. Calling the bill a “knee-jerk reaction,” Phelps said it could have “myriad unintended consequences” such as discouraging internet platforms from conducting activities in Australia to avoid being exposed to risks. Another consequence, Phelps said, is that whistleblowers “may no longer be able to deploy social media to shine a light on atrocities committed around the world” as social media companies would remove them for fear of being charged with a crime. Who is opposing the bill? There has been criticism from both groups representing tech companies and human rights experts about the seemingly haphazardness of the legislative process. “This law, which was conceived and passed in five days without any meaningful consultation, does nothing to address hate speech,” Sunita Bose, the Managing Director of the Digital Industry Group Inc., which represents Google, Facebook and other tech giants in Australia, said according to New York Times. “With the vast volumes of content uploaded to the internet every second,” Bose said, “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.” Special representatives of the U.N. Human Rights Council called for the withdrawal of the bill and additional time for consultation. In a letter, two members of the council criticized its ambiguities: “The obligations to “expeditiously” remove content and report it to law enforcement within a “reasonable” time raise questions about how quickly service providers are expected to flag and identify offending content.” The council added that the bill may “tip the scales in favor of disproportionate restrictions on freedom of expression” and therefore “undermine rather than protect the public interest.” Write to Hillary Leung at hillary.leung@time.com.