Australia law: violent content penalties for social media

Thursday, 4 April 2019, 5:06 pm
Article: RNZ

Christchurch terror attacks: Australia law adds violent content penalties for social media companies

Australia is set to fine social media companies up to 10 percent of their annual global turnover and imprison executives if violent content is not removed under a new law passed by the country's parliament today.

It is now an offence in Australia for companies, such as Facebook and YouTube, not to immediately remove any videos or photographs that show murder, torture or rape.

Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter said the law was in response to the availability of videos of the attack on the Christchurch mosques last month.

"The material was livestreamed on facebook and available on that platform for almost an hour and ten minutes until the first attempts were made to take it down.

"Simply put, we find that unacceptable."

Google, Facebook and Twitter have warned that the new law risks damaging US-Australia security co-operation and introducing mass surveillance of internet users.

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