Australia media can be sued for social media comments, court rules
bbc.com
bbc.com
^^ That's just insane.
ISPs also have the power to stop the publishing of those comments. In fact, ISPs are necessary to facilitate the publishing of any comments on the internet.
If facebook is responsible, why not the ISP as well? Maybe we should accept that platforms like facebook and reddit are similar to VPS hosting companies where we delegate the legal responsibility down further to the one who used the software to create the space.
This might actually be a good thing as delegating down means a much larger group of people moderating and those people moderate as they see fit but become legally responsible for their actions.
If Facebook was and unmoderated wild west with a linear timeline, then people would know they have to self moderate.
Facebook as made some decisions about what is acceptable, then actively promotes that content to other people, that is taking responsibility for the content, so they should be held responsible as well.
> The Court of Appeal was correct to hold that the acts of the appellants in facilitating, encouraging and thereby assisting the posting of comments by the third-party Facebook users rendered them publishers of those comments.
But lets be clear, telephone and electricity companies don't moderate your content, or use algorithms that makes some content easier to find than others.
For example see News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code - it requires platforms such as FB to enter into commercial arrangements with news media (https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...)
Don't get me started about the mandatory bargaining code. I think the ISP should have held their ground and pulled out of Australia.
(Probably something like "does the news org initiate the discussion, do they have the ability to moderate the discussion, does their branding appear prominently on the page").
After years of not using Facebook I found that I'm part of Facebook pages which I don't remember ever following. Which was one of the reasons I deleted the account, I do not want to be accused of following pages involved in criminal activities when I actually followed cute kittens pages 10 years ago.
If you can accept the fact that defamation laws are a valid limit on free speech (which Australians have), then it follows that news organisations shouldn't be able to absolve themselves of all blame after posting inflammatory content, encouragng readers to "share their opinions" and failing to provide any sort of moderation whatsoever.
This law just specifies who is responsible for the laws being broken.
Do you see any issues with this?
Yes, in that you're just ignoring the comment you replied to and repeating the same incorrect nonsense.
Disagreeing with a law does not require breaking that law. You're perfectly welcome to disagree with the lockdowns in Victoria and NSW, and you can do that wherever you want. You're not welcome to break them.
what do you think the average Australian who disagrees with them should do
Looks to me like every other anti-free speech measure enacted in the last 5 years. Just remove comments so propaganda can't be countered by the people. Only the official proclamations can be allowed.
Quite often, I find comments many times more insightful than the news stories themselves. Losing them limits the value of news sites to me.
PS: You seem to hate comments and love limiting free speech yet here you are... commenting on news stories. Rules for thee, but not for me. How very hypocritical of you.
The newspapers appear to be taking the logical response of switching off Facebook comments going forward.
Which is very welcome in my opinion. Newspaper comments sections (whether on their sites or Facebook) are some most worthless comment sections in existence.
Absolutely nothing of value will be lost.
> Absolutely nothing of value will be lost.
You are currently commenting in the comment section of a linked news story.
I suspect, politically, that it's because of two things:
Firstly, News Corp which has poisoned the well, it has made these users suspect and distrustful of all media now and welcoming of their governments censorship.
Secondly, it's due to the coronavirus lockdown implementations and associated anti-lockdown protests where the concept of free speech is now associated with harm and danger to themselves and their community.
Culturally, it could be that the users are members of the urban-living educated tech literate class. This class, and class issues generally is a new thing for Australia. Australia thinks of itself as generally classless and equal. I think we are seeing a kind of new tech class but without the informal rules (e.g. filtering, politeness) governing how more entrenched class based societies operate. But as I say, I'm puzzled and guessing here. It's certainly the only English speaking country where the users appear to be both champions of their government actions and anti news. Perhaps theres more nuance.
It could be that these users are actually just being honest and unfiltered in their posts here, which is sort of ironic given the nature of the featured article.
What we do have in Australia - with its accompanying advantages and disadvantages - are strong protections against defamation, particularly from the media. And it's that machinery which is at work here.
Nothing is stopping the media continuing to allow comments on social media posts, if they accept the legal risks associated with defamation, or they enact a sufficient level of moderation for content which carries that risk. This is a purely commercial play, not a governmental censorship one.
None of this excuses our federal government, which continues to veer towards the authoritarian end of the spectrum. But that's another topic.
EDIT: fixed typo.
It seems like we're going to be saying farewell to any web sites hosted in Australia. If you can be sued for any random thing hosted on your servers, unless you've got a fire brigade of lawyers on tap, you're just waiting to be sued out of existence.