Juno News - April 05, 2019


Australia to jail social media executives over user content


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

181.08595

Word Count

637

Sentence Count

27


Summary

In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Christchurch, Australia has passed a law that could see executives of social media companies imprisoned if they don't clean up their platforms the way the government wants them to. Andrew Lutton explains why this is a bad idea, and why we should be worried.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Whether it's firearms or free speech, a country should never use tragedy as political cover to take away freedoms.
00:00:09.180 But unfortunately, it's seeming increasingly as though that is all that governments are interested in doing when horrific events happen.
00:00:17.040 Such as the Christchurch mosque attacks in New Zealand a few short weeks ago,
00:00:20.620 which were used not only as a springboard for sweeping gun control in New Zealand,
00:00:24.660 but even indicated by Ralph Goodale in Canada as possibly fodder to justify a gun grab in Canada.
00:00:32.740 One of the most bizarre overreactions from what happened in Christchurch has been from Australia's Parliament,
00:00:38.380 which this week passed a law that could imprison the executives of social media companies
00:00:44.160 if they don't clean up their platforms the way that the Australian government wants them to.
00:00:48.640 It's specifically looking into violent streams, such as the one that the Christchurch killer used,
00:00:55.800 a live stream on Facebook and YouTube, I think, of his horrific crime.
00:01:00.420 And these things are, generally speaking, against the terms of service of pretty much every social media company imaginable.
00:01:07.380 Companies try to take these things down, but people upload them at a quicker rate than they can be deleted in many respects.
00:01:13.860 This is where the Australian approach is so flawed.
00:01:16.460 The bill would, if a social media company does not do, in the eyes of the Australian government,
00:01:21.920 a sufficiently good job at getting rid of these types of snuff films from their sites,
00:01:27.720 put a penalty towards the executives of the companies of up to three years in prison.
00:01:34.020 Now, whether they could enforce on a Twitter executive in San Francisco,
00:01:38.820 this Australian law still stands to be seen.
00:01:41.060 Although it stands to reason that these giant tech companies wouldn't want to have anything to do with Australia,
00:01:45.820 if this is the way it views them.
00:01:48.020 But more importantly, it is a fundamental lack of recognition
00:01:51.520 that the companies themselves are the ones that are on the front lines here.
00:01:55.740 Most people, when they log on to Facebook or Twitter, don't want to see someone being violently gunned down.
00:02:01.020 The companies have an incentive to meet up with their user base to get rid of these things.
00:02:05.740 But to start criminalizing footage like this when there is, say, a journalistic value in being able to share clips of these things,
00:02:15.340 are they going to start jailing reporters that show car crash footage?
00:02:18.780 Are they going to start jailing someone who takes a cell phone photo of a terrorist attack if they happen to be there?
00:02:25.380 I mean, where do we draw the line?
00:02:27.500 The problem is that status will look for any excuse to be status.
00:02:31.240 And most people are not going to stand up and defend the idea of social media snuff films.
00:02:38.560 So an overarching policy like this, a sweeping policy like this, gets passed with little criticism.
00:02:44.820 But you don't need to defend what is in the footage to defend that companies have the right and the prerogative to deal with their own platforms.
00:02:52.860 And Australia has proven that it thinks government should be able to control what people access on the internet.
00:02:58.040 Regardless of the specific content that was driving this policy, this is what the Australian government is saying.
00:03:03.960 That it should be able to decide what any ordinary Australian is able to do on the internet.
00:03:09.460 And even to such a point that they can jail someone for running afoul of that.
00:03:14.180 That is not free speech. That is not a free society.
00:03:17.640 And for Australia, which is very similar in demography and history and heritage to Canada,
00:03:23.200 this is something we need to be very concerned about.
00:03:25.640 If this is the mentality sweeping what are supposed to be liberal democracies.
00:03:29.340 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.