While Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Rod Sims who took on tech giants’ media and advertising power suggested the regulator needed new oversight powers on how they decided what content was allowed on their platforms, the Morrison government is not going further than changes already unveiled.
Two days before Christmas, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher released draft laws for an online safety act, which will include requirements for platforms to outline their standards and criteria for removing material, moderating content and suspending users in a bid to hold them to account and ensure they are applied consistently.
The proposed laws, which are open for public consultation, will significantly enhance the powers of the eSafety Commissioner, including ordering platforms to take down abusive, bullying and harmful material within hours.
Several backbench Coalition MPs have warned that unilateral bannings run counter to free speech and cast doubt on claims by Twitter and Facebook they are not publishers or accountable for what is posted on their platforms, with Mr Frydenberg echoing those concerns.
US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was suspended because of his inflammatory response on the platform to last week’s Washington riots. Bloomberg
“I feel pretty uncomfortable with those measures which were announced. Freedom of speech is fundamental to our society,” he said.
“Those decisions were taken by commercial companies, but personally I felt uncomfortable with what they did.”
Mr McCormack accused Twitter of censorship, contrasting the ban on Mr Trump to its inaction on the Chinese foreign ministry using its Twitter account to spread a doctored image on Australia soldier committing a war crime.
It is unfortunate that we have seen the events at the Capitol Hill that we’ve seen in recent days, similar to those race riots that we saw around the country last year.
Michael McCormack, acting Prime Minister
“I would say to the owners of Twitter, if you’re going to take down the comments of who is still the American President you need to think also about the photo, the doctored image, which shows a soldier, supposedly an Australian Digger with a child in his arms, about to do harm to that child,” he said.
“Now that has not been taken down, and that is wrong.”
In an interview with the ABC, Mr McCormack said last week’s Capitol Hill riot was “unfortunate” but it was up to the US to decide whether Mr Trump should be ousted from the White House earlier than the end of his term on January 20.
“It is unfortunate that we have seen the events at the Capitol Hill that we’ve seen in recent days, similar to those race riots that we saw around the country last year,” he said.
Amnesty International said Mr McCormack should withdraw his comments describing the Black Lives Matter protests as “race riots”.
“To call the Black Lives Matters movement ‘race riots’ shows that the acting Prime Minister ignored the hundreds of thousands of people who stood in solidarity, here and around the world, who want to make systemic racism a thing of the past,” Indigenous rights spokesman Nolan Hunter said.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said Prime Minister Scott Morrison needed to haul backbench MPs Craig Kelly and George Christensen into line for peddling right-wing conspiracy theories online.