Australia plans tough social media law after Christchurch attacks

The Australian government has announced plans to introduce hard new anti-terror regulations to prevent human beings from “weaponizing social media platforms” and “live streaming violent crimes” because it happened during a recent assault on Christchurch mosques in New Zealand.

The attacker, a 28-year-antique Australian, live-streamed the 17-minute capturing spree at one of the mosques on Facebook. Fifty mosque-goers were killed inside the assault earlier in March.

In the world, social media giants are penalized with prison and thousands and thousands of bucks in fines if they no longer remove violent materials quickly. With the new law, Australia turns into the primary you. S.

The rules will be added to parliament the following week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated on Saturday.

“Big social media businesses must take each possible move to ensure their generation merchandise aren’t exploited through murderous terrorists,” Morrison stated in a joint statement with his lawyer general and communications minister.

He stated the new legislation would force social media companies “to get their act together and paintings with regulation enforcement and intelligence organizations to defuse the threat their technology can present.”

Stiff penalties

Attorney-General Christian Porter said the law would consist of sentences of up to 10 percent of an employer’s annual turnover, and executives ought to face up to 3 years in jail if social media systems fail to behave to cast off strong material.

The draft legislation also calls for social media shops to inform police if their service is being used to broadcast violent crimes, just like they’ve to tell them if it’s miles being used to get admission to toddler pornography.

The proposed law objectives show “abhorrent violent substances,” which means the gambling or streaming of acts of “terrorism,” murder, attempted homicide, torture, rape, and kidnapping on social media.

The new regulation will make it a crook offense not to remove such substances “expeditiously.” Also, social media systems worldwide should notify the Australian Federal Police if they become aware their provider is streaming such violent conduct occurring in Australia.

Morrison additionally stated an assignment pressure of the presidency and social media giants become being formed to work collectively to address the problem.

The regulation and the challenge pressure would form the idea of a model technique asking the G20 countries for a global agreement to force the “social media agencies into our collective net of duty and duty,” he said.

Morrison has already written to the modern G20 chairman, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, asking him to include social media governance as a priority on the timetable at the subsequent summit assembly in Osaka in June.

Mitch Fifield, the communications minister, stated on Saturday that the invoice will now not affect the capacity of information media to document a public hobby occasionally.

Earlier this week, Morrison and various ministers met with representatives of social media agencies, including Facebook officials, to discuss the Christchurch attacks.

“They did now not present any instant solutions to the troubles springing up out of the horror that came about in Christchurch,” Fifield stated.

“We will not allow social media structures to be weaponized using terrorists and violent extremists who are seeking to harm and kill, and nor might we allow a scenario that a younger Australian toddler may want to log onto social media and watch a mass murder take location,” Fifield said.

After Christchurch, Facebook stated it removed 1.5 million copies of the video of the attack within the first 24 hours after the shootings.