Australia threatens social networks laws that might prison tech executives

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Following the livestreamed New Zealand mosque shooting that left 50 dead in Christchurch, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is wanting to punish extremist material on social networks.

Morrison will on Tuesday consult with Australian executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to talk about extremist content legislation that would penalize these business’ executives with prison time, the Australian Financial Review reports. Local web service companies will likewise exist at the conference.

“If social media companies fail to demonstrate a willingness to immediately institute changes to prevent the use of their platforms, like what was filmed and shared by the perpetrators of the terrible offences in Christchurch, we will take action,” stated Morrison.

“We are considering all options to keep Australian safe.”

Tech business have actually gone through increased analysis to much better control their material following Facebook’s failure to capture and eliminate the Christchurch shooter’s livestream of the massacre.

Facebook stated recently that no users reported the 17-minute video when it was live, which the very first user report came 12 minutes after the livestream ended. In other words, the initial video was readily available on Facebook for a complete 29 minutes. Facebook had the ability to purge 1.5 million uploads of the video and 1.2 million were obstructed prior to going live on the platform.

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Details of the proposed legislation aren’t yet known. However, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to any company operating in the continent, showed that tech companies can change their global practices to appease local legislation.

News of Morrison’s meeting with tech executives comes on the same day that his government announced increased punishment for companies misusing user information. Maximum penalties for misuse of private data was raised from AU$2.1 million to AU$10 million — or 10 percent of the company’s domestic revenue, or three times the value gained from that misuse of data.

“The tech industry needs to do much more to protect Australians’ data and privacy,” said Communications Minister Mitchell Fifield.