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Australia wants to be able to unmask harmful online trolls

Australia is experiencing something of an infodemic at the moment although most of the information appears to stem from outside of the continent.

Those peddling misinformation would have you believe the country is on the brink of war and that people are being placed in camps when that isn’t the case at all.

It appears, however, as if Prime Minister Scott Morrison has had just about enough of trolls and peddlers of misinformation on social media.

“Social media can too often be a cowards’ palace, where the anonymous can bully, harass and ruin lives without consequence,” said Morrison.

To address this, the PM is proposing the courts be granted the power to unmask anonymous trolls online and protect Australians. Of course, this requires buy-in from social media platforms.

This is because according to the reforms proposed by Morrison social media platforms will be required to establish a complaints system that will remove defamatory remarks and identify trolls.

In the event that a troll doesn’t consent to being identified, the PM proposes new court order which would compel social media platforms to provide identifying information for use in a defamation case.

“In a free society with free speech, you can’t be a coward and attack people and expect not to be held accountable for it,” said Morrison.

What exactly this legislation will look like beyond the reforms outlined above, is not yet known as a draft will only be published in the coming weeks.

Earlier this year Australia and took the fight to Silicon Valley with the proposed Media Bargaining law. Under this law it was proposed that the likes of Facebook and Google would have to share advertising revenue with news publishers in Australia.

The proposal was, however, changed to appease Silicon Valley firms in February.

Laws such as those proposed by Australia aren’t especially new. Websites in China and some in South Korea force users to register with their real names. Whether Silicon Valley would make similar concessions in Australia isn’t clear but we foresee a lot of push back.

With that having been said, the idea that users should register online is fraught with privacy concerns and given the amount of cybercrime at present, maybe having a central repository loaded with personal information isn’t the best idea.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]

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