Australia proposes new laws to combat ‘trolls’ and curb slurs on social media

The Australian Government has announced that it is working on new legislation with which it intends to combat ‘trolls’ on social networks and end the defamations and false information that is poured through comments in different publications.

As indicated by the Executive in a press release, with these laws it seeks that the large social network companies, with Twitter or Facebook, address the problem of defamatory comments published on their platforms and have more responsibility in this regard.

“Too often, social networks are often a space for cowards, where anonymous people can intimidate, harass and ruin lives without consequences,” said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, according to this statement.

These new legislation will offer users two ways to unmask the ‘trolls’ and to resolve these types of conflicts. First, these platforms are going to be required to establish a complaints system that presents a simple and standardized format that guarantees that defamatory comments can be eliminated and ‘trolls’ identified.

Second, this regulation will establish a new order from the Federal Court that requires these social networks to reveal the data of the harassers in order to identify them. This will allow victims to file a complaint against you.

This new regulation arises from a case that occurred in the country in 2019 and that the Asturian Supreme Court has recently ruled. In that year, a man named Dylan Voller sued three media outlets (Fairfax Media, Nationwide News and Sky News) for defamation through the comments that different users wrote on his Facebook page.

These media published a video showing Voller being abused in a juvenile detention center in the Northern Territory of Australia. Facebook users began to write comments, some of them against him, in which he was accused of a series of crimes that would justify this treatment by the prison authorities. (I)