Australia Passes Law to Punish Social Media Companies for Violent Posts

A consortium of the global tech superpowers, including Google, Facebook and Amazon, also argued that it would damage Australia’s relations with other countries because it would require “proactive” surveillance of all users worldwide, while criminalizing content reposted by users without the companies knowing about it. “This law, which was conceived and passed in five days without any meaningful consultation, does nothing to address hate speech, which was the fundamental motivation for the tragic Christchurch terrorist attacks,” said Sunita Bose, the managing director of the Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocacy group representing Facebook, Google and other companies. It’s not clear whether Australia would be able to take action against companies that do not have offices in the country, nor is it clear if it would have a right to impose profit-based penalties on international behemoths like Facebook.

Source: www.nytimes.com