{"id":7426,"date":"2021-01-13T04:32:03","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T04:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationaus.com\/?p=15825"},"modified":"2021-01-13T04:32:03","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T04:32:03","slug":"trumpian-debate-over-social-de-platforming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/13\/trumpian-debate-over-social-de-platforming\/","title":{"rendered":"Trumpian debate over social de-platforming"},"content":{"rendered":"

The suspension of US Presiden<\/strong>t Donald Trump from a number of social media platforms has kicked off a muddled political storm in Australia, with a parliamentary group set to be launched to push for further regulation of the tech giants.<\/p>\n

Following the violent storming of the US Capitol last week, Mr Trump was banned from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This led to significant debate in Australian politics over censorship and misinformation on social media, with politicians from both sides of the aisles calling for more transparency and stricter regulations for the likes of Facebook.<\/p>\n

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chair Rod Sims, who has been driving the government\u2019s crackdown on big tech, has also said that more needs to be done and further oversight is needed of decisions made by these big tech firms.<\/p>\n

\"Karen
Karen Andrews: Supportive of new parliamentary group<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now more than 50 MPs have joined a yet to be launched \u201cparliamentary friends of making social media safe\u201d group, led by Victorian Nationals MP Anne Webster and NSW Labor MP Sharon Claydon.<\/p>\n

Industry Minister Karen Andrews has thrown her support behind the new group, saying social media companies need to be more transparent about their decision-making.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a deeper question here that we need to start considering, which is the consistency, the fairness of these various rules. And what is that threshold? There have been many instances of comments that have been taken down from various platforms, but yet in some instances, these platforms are very quick to act when it seems as if the subject content is something that they don\u2019t personally agree with,\u201d Ms Andrews told 3AW.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is unfair, it is inconsistent, and it lacks the transparency that we are looking. The conversation really is about social media ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new parliamentary group is about starting that conversation, Ms Andrews said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really need to make sure that we listen to what the Australian public is saying as a parliamentary group. So it\u2019s a group of MPs that have come together because they have strong views on social media,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing that the parliamentary group will do is look at what the issues are and how best to prosecute that. But of course, as a government we can and will continue to take action, quite aside from whatever advice comes through from that parliamentary group.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Nine newspapers, ACCC chair Rod Sims said further regulation may be needed around this issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly the digital platforms do have some control over what we see and read. How much we can leave it up to the digital platforms…is one of the defining questions we have to face. We definitely need the government to get to grips with this; we can\u2019t just leave it with the digital platforms,\u201d Mr Sims said.<\/p>\n

A number of Coalition ministers raised concerns with the banning of Mr Trump from social media platforms, including acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack and Treasurer Josh Frydenbergy, while former Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce called on the tech giants to remove more content from their platforms.<\/p>\n

The sometimes confusing debate has straddled freedom of speech, censorship and the role of tech companies in policing their own platforms, and how much say governments should say in this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Labor MPs, including shadow assistant minister for cybersecurity Tim Watts, have largely backed Facebook and Twitter\u2019s decision to remove Mr Trump,<\/p>\n

\u201cMajor social media companies have self-regulatory policies that align pretty well with norms in democractic societies and they are right to enforce them when breached, whether for users inciting violence or otherwise,\u201d Mr Watts told InnovationAus.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media platforms have a responsibility to stop people from using their platforms to incite violence, engage in hate speech or spread dangerous medical misinformation during a pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Watts also called on the government to take a similar approach and rein in a number of Coalition members, including Craig Kelly and George Christensen, posting unverified and dangerous conspiracies on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott Morrison has a similar responsibility to show leadership and stop his MPs from sharing dangerous conspiracy theories online. The Prime Minister should make it clear that he expects his MPs not to promote dangerous conspiracy theories, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they can\u2019t agree to this, he should make it clear that he doesn\u2019t want to be associated with them and seek their disendorsement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally also called on the federal government to not use any cloud hosting providers that offer services to controversial social media platform Parler, after AWS banned the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment should use its customer power to make clear that it will not use internet hosting \/ cloud providers that host services like Parler that allow people to incite violence and plan terrorist attacks. Those that don\u2019t follow suit and continue to provide services to these groups are complicit in their actions,\u201d Senator Keneally tweeted.<\/p>\n

The post Trumpian debate over social de-platforming<\/a> appeared first on InnovationAus<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on InnovationAus<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The suspension of US President Donald Trump from a number of social media platforms has kicked off a muddled political storm in Australia, with a parliamentary group set to be launched to push for further regulation of the tech giants. Following the violent storming of the US Capitol last week, Mr Trump was banned from…<\/p>\n

The post Trumpian debate over social de-platforming<\/a> appeared first on InnovationAus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":626,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042,2043,49,725,1892,2044,1910,739],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7448,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions\/7448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}