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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – The Australian Prime Minister on Thursday called social media a “cowardly palace” and warned that digital platforms, including Facebook, should be held accountable for defamatory comments posted anonymously.
Anonymous commentators who use social media to vilify and intimidate have become the latest battleground between Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government and America’s tech giants. The government wants social media users to be required to identify themselves.
Australia passed laws this year that force Google and Facebook to pay for journalism. Australia has also defied tech companies by creating a law that could jail social media managers if their platforms broadcast violent images.
Morrison said platforms that do not reveal the identity of people who post defamatory comments should be held accountable for those comments.
“Cowards who go to social media anonymously and defame people, harass them, bully them and make defamatory statements, they have to be responsible for what they say,” Morrison said.
“Social media has become a palace of cowards where people can just go on, not say who they are, destroy people’s lives and say the grossest and most offensive things to people, and do so with impunity,” he said. he added.
His comments come as Australian state and territory governments rush to rewrite their defamation laws after the High Court last month set a precedent for the internet age, ruling that the media can be held accountable for Defamatory comments posted by third parties on their Facebook pages.
The court did not decide whether Facebook was also responsible because the platform was not sued.
The precedent applies to admins of all Facebook pages, including governments. The Tasmanian state government has blocked comments from its social media sites and the US news agency CNN has banned Australians from its Facebook page.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said on Wednesday that the National Review of Defamation Laws would likely examine whether Facebook should be responsible for user posts.
Morrison said the need for platforms to identify commentators was a goal his government “would look further into.”
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