Australian lawmakers focus on social media role after Christchurch shootings

Australia is set to legislate tough new laws to prevent the weaponizing of social media platforms and to protect Australians from the livestreaming of violent crimes, following the Christchurch mosque mass shootings in New Zealand last month that fueled concerns about extremism.

"Big social media companies have a responsibility to take every possible action to ensure their technology products are not exploited by murderous terrorists," Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday.

"It should not just be a matter of just doing the right thing. It should be the law."

A joint media release said the new legislation would be introduced in Parliament soon to push social media companies to work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies to defuse the threat their technologies can present to the safety of Australians.

The approaches will likely be taken to the G20 to "get our global partners on board to bring social media companies into our collective net of responsibility and accountability", Morrison said. He has asked for the issue of social media governance to be put on the agenda for the June G20 summit in Japan.

On March 15, a gunman walked into two mosques in the New Zealand city and opened fire, livestreaming his attack on social media. He used semi-automatic assault weapons bought legally in a country that many consider to have lax gun laws. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, who was born in Australia but lived in New Zealand, has been charged with murder in the attacks, which left 50 people dead and dozens injured.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed to investigate the role social media played in the attack and to take action against the sites that broadcast it.

New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification has since officially banned possession and sharing of not only the livestream shooting, but also the online "manifesto" of Tarrant. The country's Chief Censor David Shanks said the manifesto "promotes murder and terrorism," and that his office was treating it like banned terrorist material from Islamic militant group ISIS.

Social network giant Facebook has said it was banning "praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism" on its platforms.

In Australia, Attorney-General Christian Porter said the Criminal Code Amendment (Unlawful Showing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Bill 2019 will include new offenses with penalties of up 10 percent of a company's annual turnover and potential prison sentences for executives of social media companies who fail to act to remove abhorrent violent material from their platforms.

Australia's Minister for Communications and the Arts Mitch Fifield has also said that social media companies "did not present any immediate solutions to the issues arising out of the horror that occurred in Christchurch".

"We will not allow social media platforms to be weaponized by terrorists and violent extremists who seek to harm and kill and nor would we allow a situation that a young Australian child could log onto social media and watch a mass murder take place," he said.

"The tech industry needs to do much more to protect Australians' data and privacy," Fifield said.

Porter and Fifield also announced amending the penalty regime under the Privacy Act.

"Existing protections and penalties for misuse of Australians' personal information under the Privacy Act fall short of community expectations, particularly as a result of the explosion in major social media and online platforms that trade in personal information over the past decade," Porter said.

In New Zealand, a local man and a teenager are being charged for offenses relating to reposting the gunman's video. The teenager is also charged for posting a photo of a mosque attacked with the caption "target acquired" a week before the attack.

Jennifer Beckett, a lecturer in communications at the University of Melbourne, Australia, said policing social media content may be easier said than done.

"People who use social media need to be more proactive," she told China Daily. "You see something that is offensive, you report it ... We have the laws to prevent a lot of objectionable material and speech that goes up on social media－(they are) just not being used."

Andre Oboler, a senior law lecturer at La Trobe University, also in Melbourne, said the most practical approach to combat the livestreaming of acts of terrorism is through a notification system.

Andrew Jakubowicz, professor of sociology at the University of Technology Sydney, said: "The specifics of Christchurch where the live feed from Facebook was spread might be preventable, but only if 'live' comes with an auto-delay."