Australia will introduce new laws to force media platforms to explain online trolls By Reuters

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia will introduce legislation to provide details on users of social media giants posting defamatory comments, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.

The government has been investigating the extent of liability for defamatory materials posted on platforms such as Twitter (NYSE 🙂 and Facebook (NASDAQ 🙂 and comes after the country’s highest court ruled that publishers could be held liable. public comments in online forums.

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

“The online world shouldn’t be a wild west, where bots and bigots and trolls and others roam anonymously and can harm people,” Morrison said in a televised press conference.

“That’s not what can happen in the real world, and there’s no case for it to happen in the digital world.”

The new legislation will establish a grievance mechanism so that if someone thinks they are being defamed, harassed or attacked on social media, they can ask the platform to remove the material.

If the content is not removed, a lawsuit could force a social media platform to provide details of the commenter.

“Digital platforms – these online businesses – need to have the right processes in place to enable this content to be removed,” Morrison said.

“They’ve created space and they have to make it safe, and if they don’t, we’ll do it through laws like this.”