A government review into online safety has laid the blame for trolls and internet harassment on Big Tech companies for not properly enforcing their own rules.
While the committee made no specific recommendations on an increasingly heated “anti-trolling bill”, currently facing scrutiny, it did suggest considering government mandates for platform transparency.
The inquiry’s final report unanimously recommended holding social media platforms accountable for policing issues of online abuse.
“For too long social media platforms have been able to ‘set the rules’, enabling the proliferation of online abuse,” Committee Chair, Liberal MP Lucy Wicks said.
“Technology and online predators evolve quickly, so the Government must continue to hold social media companies to account and support victims of abuse.”
Ms Wicks added government’s role should be to regulate and monitor the sectoxjmtzywr and that individuals should also understand what is an appropriate level of “dissent and disagreement” and what should not be tolerated.
Another recommendation was mandating that social media profiles of people under 18 years old be set to the highest privacy setting as a default.
“The balance of responsibility for the safety of users online, which until recently has been primarily on users, must be ‘flipped’ to ensure that social media platforms bear more of the burden of providing safety for their users,” Ms Wicks said.
Other recommendations included establishing a review of all online safety legislation and government programs, requesting the eSafety Commissioner examine the extent to which social media companies enforce their policies when users experience harm, and expand the reach of educational programs for young people and adults.
“To protect Australians, social media companies have to take responsibility to enforce their terms of service, prevent recidivism of bad actors, prevent pile-ons or volumetric attacks, prevent harms across multiple platforms and be more transparent about their use of algorithms,” Ms Wicks said.
The findings come amid an increasingly heated debate over proposed anti-trolling legislation, currently being considered by a Senate inquiry.
Speaking at the inquiry on Tuesday, senior lawyer Sue Chrysanthou SC labelled the proposal a “violent assault” on defamation law.
“My colleagues and I think that this legislation is misconceived and should not proceed,” she said.
“This bill is a violent assault on the tort of defamation by the Commonwealth, for which no rational basis or reason has been provided.”
Despite the name, and government’s representation of the bill, the proposal will do little to reduce online trolling.
Instead, it would create a new court order to “unmask” users if comments posted were defamatory in nature.
The bill was established following a High Court judgment, which ruled media outlets were considered publishers of third-party comments on their social media pages.
But the defamation lawyer said assumptions made in the drafting of the bill were a misreading of that case.
“Anyone who knows anything about defamation will tell you that,” she told the inquiry.
“(The ruling) has not caused an influx of reactions against unsuspecting hosts of Facebook pages, like sporting clubs or groups.”
However, Liberal committee chair Sarah Henderson, who herself claims she was defamed on Twitter, took issue with the fact Ms Chrysanthou had not run a case against the social media platform.
“This bill is all about … unmasking the anonymous abusers, about giving redress. It appears that in your practice, you don’t actually run cases in relation to these social media platforms,” Senator Henderson said.
But Ms Chrysanthou said there hasn’t been a need to sue the companies directly.
“It is a large part of my practice; suing or asking for people to sue over social media posts,” she told the inquiry.
“But so far, there hasn't been a need to deal with Twitter or Facebook.
“It’s only a theoretical question with Twitter and Facebook, because as far as I am aware, they have not been sued.”
Earlier, Twitter claimed it had received 50 law enforcement requests in the past year, and had complied with the majority of them.
With only three days left on the parliamentary sitting calendar before the federal election, it is unlikely the bill will pass the Senate, and will instead lapse.
