Australia creates commission to analyze violent content on social networks

The government of Australia announced this Friday the creation of a parliamentary commission to analyze the influence and impact of the social networksfollowing the battle between X and Canberra over restrictions on violent images and Meta’s decision to abandon payments to the media.

This proposal, which will be submitted to Parliament next week, will put harmful or illegal content under the microscope, including sexual abuse of minors and violent extremist material, according to a statement from Australia’s Minister of Communications, Michelle Rowland. .

One of these contentious contents that has irritated the Australian Government were the images of the knife attack perpetrated on April 15 by a teenager against Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in an Assyrian church in the city of Sydney while he was celebrating a mass broadcast on the social networks.

As a result of the attack, considered by the Police to be a terrorist incident, the Electronic Security Commission asked social networks to delete the images, but X, unlike Meta, refused to do so, thus opening a legal battle.

As a result, the Federal Court issued a precautionary measure on April 22, which expires today, to prevent the dissemination of that video in the oceanic country, where X assured that he will explore all legal avenues to defend his freedom of expression and prevent Australia prevents him from showing those images in the rest of the world.

Today, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a press conference in Canberra that “Australians understand that networks play an important role in people’s lives, but with social media comes the need for social license and social responsibility.”

In this sense, Albanese stressed that the influence of these media is reflected “whether it is the issue of domestic violence or the radicalization of our young people,” when justifying the proposal.

Likewise, the Australian Government wants the parliamentary commission to analyze the decision of Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), which announced last March not to renew the commercial agreements signed with various media in Australia to publish news content on their platforms.

The payment to journalistic media for the publication of their news content in Australia occurred in 2021, the year in which a pioneering law in the world was approved that forced platforms such as Google and Facebook to make these payments because they considered that these companies generated billionaires. income.

The commission will also address the role of journalism in the fight against disinformation on digital platforms, as well as the use of algorithms for content selection, according to the government statement.

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