Qld youth crime crisis: Steven Miles takes aim at Meta
Premier Steven Miles will write to social media giant Meta to raise his concerns about its platforms’ “shameless” promotion of violent crimes.
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Premier Steven Miles will write to Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta to raise his concerns about the platforms’ “shameless” promotion of violent crimes.
It comes as Townsville police reveal juvenile offenders are giving crimes points-style values in an attempt to outdo each other on social media.
A government spokesman said on Sunday: “Queensland was one of the first jurisdictions in the nation to introduce laws targeting criminals who boast about certain crimes on social media.
“The Miles government has and will continue to pass laws to assist police with fighting crime as new technologies emerge.
“Last year we provided the Queensland Police Service with specific resources to establish the Digital Intelligence and Community Engagement (DICE) team, which is a nation-leading social media crime fighting capability.
“The QPS and DICE team, work with Meta through their representative to flag specific accounts for removal where the content breaches the platform’s terms of service.
“The QPS also works with the Office of the e-Safety Commissioner to report and remove inappropriate content.”
Queensland police said on Sunday they had made requests to Meta and other social media companies to take down accounts used by young criminals to brag about their exploits.
In a statement to The Courier-Mail they said investigators worked with Meta’s trust and safety representative to flag and disable accounts where the content breached the platform’s terms of service.
Townsville Detective Acting Inspector Dave Miles said this week: “There are groups that want to escalate their offending because they assign different values to different sorts of offences to try and show how competent they are among their peers.
“If someone gets a particular car, then someone will want to get a better car.
“If someone wants to challenge police in a certain way, then they will ramp up…”
Police said 196 young people had been charged with offences that included the aggravating factor of “social media boasting” since new laws passed a year ago.
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