Australian government social media legislation to unmask online trolls | Hacker News Reader

Australian government social media legislation to unmask online trolls

9news.com.au

To be clear, "unmask online trolls" is code for "violate the privacy of everyone online".

No it is not a mass order. It will only be provided to the defamed person.

But the "defamed person" may often end up being a politician or someone supporting the government's political aims. If the US had this law, I imagine it would make people reluctant to discuss Mike Lindell (the My Pillow guy), for example.

> "In a free society such as Australia where we value our free speech, it is only free when that is balanced with the responsibility for what you say," Mr Morrison said.

Another political leader had a similar view on human rights:

> “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” ― Idi Amin

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9082497-there-is-freedom-of...

> "In a free society such as Australia where we value our free speech, it is only free when that is balanced with the responsibility for what you say," Mr Morrison said.

Just leaving this here for the record, Australia does NOT have the concept of "free speech" that Americans are familiar with codified into the legal system.

https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/human-rights-an...

https://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4529/do-we-have-the-righ...

> If a claim goes to court, a social media platform will also be required to "unmask" a troll by providing an email address, a mobile phone number or relevant personal detail.

I'm confused. Is this not already possible in Australia? Here in Canada it's possible to subpoena a third party to the end of discovering the identity of the party you need to sue. At this point, I believe it's basically routine. There's been many "anonymous" Twitter-related libel cases in the last few years.

You have to understand the background of this law, it may very well possible but time consuming and based on current defamation laws that were written for print media. In a recent high court case it was ruled that an online content posted on a Facebook business page of a media company the publisher is the business and in Australia the publisher is liable for defamation, not Facebook. So it is easier to sue the business (including small businesses) than the actual poster. This law will override this judgement and make explicit that the online poster is the one liable for defamation. In that case you can apply for a court order to unmask the person behind the account. If the social media companies fails to do so then THEY will be liable for the defamation.

Australian government will also fund test cases as for a ordinary person to mount a federal court case against the likes of Facebook is very expensive

> If the social media companies fails to do so then THEY will be liable for the defamation.

How do they collect if the company isn’t even inside Australia? What if it’s not a company at all and all identities are private (i.e. decentralized)? Or are they trying to make these kinds of services illegal?

> How do they collect if the company isn’t even inside Australia?

For companies with a legal or property presence (essentially all large ones like Facebook or Twitter) that the civil Australian courts could get to, it's pretty easy to compel them to do something.

Ok, but hypothesizing a future where a social media platform is not holding a legal or property presence in Australia, I fail to see how they can enforce it without censorship. And a future in which that platform is fully decentralized and potentially even uncensorable, they’re going to do what, outlaw math? Firewall themselves off from the rest of the world? I know they’re already trying on the former. They’re going to be in for a rough awakening when they realize they’re shutting the door on an economic revolution.

they might not care if they (the politicians) are still being feed while the rest of australia starves. look at north korea, the regime is well feed, but also they have contracts with china so that might be why, i couldn’t see australia (a free nation) siding with china, russia, north korea or any other authoritarian government for support in the future but crazier things have happened. history has a ton of examples of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com