It’s the Factcheckers who should be monitored.
While I don’t support the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, there needs to be a mechanism whereby people are allowed to appeal the decisions made by social media companies when they censor people’s pages.
Too many people are gagged by social media with no avenue of appeal.
I’d prefer it if the Government held social media companies to account and not the people.
Environment and Communications Legislation Committee
11/10/2024
Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024
Senator RENNICK: Hi, guys. Given that the government is effectively forcing foreign social media companies to censor Australians, do you think the government should also provide an avenue of appeal to those Australians to appeal a decision of the foreign social media companies if they are censored? Or is the government, effectively, going to allow social media companies to be the judge and jury, with no right of appeal from Australian citizens? That’s effectively what this bill is doing.
Ms O’Shea : I am happy to try to answer that question. I’m not entirely convinced by the premise, I must say. My understanding is that the process is that ACMA requires, or has the capacity to require, the creation of codes that then determine how content might be moderated, with a view to regulating for mis- and disinformation. That is a process that would involve engagement between the regulator and the industry. I think I would agree with my colleagues from ACCAN: in these processes, there’s rarely sufficient representation for consumers, or for people who advocate for human rights or civil society generally, in the creation of those codes. That is a problem, because, in general, civil society is underresourced, and it becomes a situation where industry is very well resourced, and the regulator, at times, is as well, and there isn’t enough of a role for civil society to play in being a voice for people who use these services.
In that sense, I think it is worth recognising that that process of co-creation needs to have in it some accommodation for citizen voice that is properly resourced to do that work. If you’re asking whether there should be an appeal mechanism for people who may have had content taken down on the basis that it doesn’t meet the obligations—
Senator RENNICK: Yes. That’s what I’m asking.
Ms O’Shea : or stipulations of the code, I think there is a role for the existence of that kind of appeal process. At the moment, on these platforms, people are deplatformed all the time—and often that’s for reasons that fall on both sides of the political spectrum—and that is a problem, so I think there is some role to be played in that kind of appeal mechanism. But if you are going to follow through on this process and draft the codes right, you’d minimise the creation of that problem and the need for that appeal mechanism.
