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Concerns Raised Over Australia's 'Rushed' Social Media Law

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Following the Christchurch terrorist attack, the Australian parliament has passed legislation requiring social media platforms to identify and start removing 'abhorrent violent material' within an hour.

Failure to do so could lead to fines for the companies amounting to ten per cent of turnover, and jail terms for senior executives.

"Big social media companies have a responsibility to take every possible action to ensure their technology products are not exploited by murderous terrorists," says prime minister Scott Morrison in a statement.

"It should not just be a matter of just doing the right thing. It should be the law."

The Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material bill itself doesn't give a deadline for removal of banned content, defined as terrorist attacks, murders, rape or kidnapping.

However, in a television briefing, attorney-general Christian Porter cited the live stream of the Christchurch massacre, which was viewed live by 200 Facebook users, and about 4,000 times in all.

"What I can say - and I think every Australian would agree - it was totally unreasonable that it should exist on this site for well over an hour without them taking any action whatsoever," he said.

"This law would prevent that and criminalize that and offer the government an ability to respond where an organisation like Facebook let something livestream and play for a long period of time on their platform."

However, this is of course easier said than done. Facebook has said that not one of the 200 live viewers of the video reported it. Once it was reported, says the company, it was removed and hashed so that copies could be identified; nevertheless, around 300,000 versions made it through.

And the speed with which the legislation has been passed has come under fire from rights groups, who say there hasn't been enough consideration of human rights. There's a danger of censorship and over-removal of content, they say.

"Regulating online speech in a few days is a tremendous mistake. Rather than pushing through reactionary proposals that make for good talking points, the Australian government and members of Parliament should invest in a measured, paced participatory reflection carefully aimed at achieving their legitimate public policy goals," says Lucie Krahulcova, Australia policy analyst at Access Now.

"The reality here is that there is no easy way to stop people from uploading or sharing links to videos of harmful content. No magic algorithm exists that can distinguish a violent massacre from videos of police brutality."

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