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On the 4th of April 2019, the Australian government passed the law which penalizes social media platforms for violent content. The primary reason why the Australian government issued this law is to prevent violent videos on social media platforms. However, not everybody was satisfied with new legislation such as tech industry, media companies, and legal experts; they(mentioned above institutions) believe that "it(law) may criminalize anyone in their companies for a failure to remove violent material" (Karp, 2019).
The law constructs a special regime: eSafety Commissioner should inform social media companies which are hosting violent content to put it (violent videos) down. In the case where companies deny to do that, there are some fines. The range of corporate penalties varies up to $10.5 m. or 10% of annual turnover, punishments for individuals who will fail to cut off the violent material can be up to 3 years in prison, $2.1 m, or both (Karp, 2019).
The attorney general, Christian Porter, expressed his opinion on this issue. He claims that social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter, should not play violent videos, for example, footage from murder or footage of terrorist attacks. What is more, C. Porter mentioned that television should not show this kind of content. The attorney general is mainly concerned about the fact that social media platforms do not take it seriously and keep showing violent videos.
The Digital Media Group, which speaks for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Verizon Media, states that the law was passed without any adequate concern. The Group assumes that penalties can turn into large bills, as social media users create the violating content and it is incredibly hard to regulate every video on a social media platform.
Even though, there are opposite opinions about the law, it has a positive impact on society because nobody is safe from violent content and reducing it will not only improve the life of society but also reduce the amount of violent behavior.
References:
Karp, P. (2019, April 04). Australia passes social media law penalising platforms for violent content. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/04/australia-passes-social-media-law-penalising-platforms-for-violent-content
Hey Sofia, good job on your blog! I would say I agree with this law, the videos you can come across on social media are crazy sometimes, I have personally seen a video of a murder on Facebook being casually shared and just yesterday I had a video of a man breaking his neck on my Instagram feed. However, I do agree with the point that it’s easy to criminalize someone just for not removing the video in time and I think the punishment of a prison sentence is too drastic. Instagram also has algorithms that are supposed to identify and remove violent videos or pictures but sometimes they do not work well at all. There was a picture of a goose walking by a fire that went viral because it looked like the goose is burning and the Instagram algorithm would identify it as violent.
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