PM Scott Morrison warns on live streaming

Scott Morrison has called on social media platforms to reconsider whether they can safely offer live-streaming video services.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Scott Morrison has called on ­social media platforms to reconsider whether they can safely offer live-streaming video services after they were used to broadcast shocking footage of the terrorist attack in New Zealand on Friday in which 50 people were killed.

Bill Shorten also criticised the new media platforms for double standards in knowing details about consumers that they could profit from, but being unable to detect, prevent and discourage hate speech and not being ­accountable in the manner of newspapers and other traditional media.

“I say to the social media giants, you have a commercial dynamic that you sell as liberty. But there is no liberty to hate. There is no liberty to practise hate speech,” the Opposition Leader said.

“I say to those big social media giants, you cannot be distant, an island away from the conduct of your platforms. If a newspaper wrote some of the stuff that you allow on your media platforms, they’d be in court. If individuals at a cafe or a pub spoke in the way that you let people speak online, there’d be a call to the police.”

Facebook failed to detect the video before gunman Brenton Tarrant streamed it on Facebook, despite him warning two days earlier that he planned to act, and it was uploaded to YouTube, owned by Google, before being copied and shared around the world.

Facebook said yesterday it ­had removed 1.5 million copies of the video, while Google had removed thousands of copies.

The Prime Minister said the government would speak to the platforms to ensure live-streaming could not be accessed by terrorists.

“In the past, they have suspended this sort of Facebook live-streaming and assurances were given that when it was put back up, it could avoid this. Clearly it hasn’t,” Mr Morrison said.

“I think there is some very real discussions that have to be had about how these facilities and capabilities as they exist on social media can continue to be offered, where there can’t be the assurances given at a technology level, that once these images get out there, it is very difficult to prevent them.”

Both sides of politics stopped short of calling for regulation. But the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has already recommended an independent ­review of regulation to ensure it is applied equally to publishers, broadcasters and digital platforms. Several submissions to the ACCC digital platforms inquiry supported extending the Broadcasting Services Act to the tech giants.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said regulating live-streaming was not part of the commission’s review.

Mr Shorten criticised the platforms for being “Pontius Pilate” and avoiding matters relating to detecting and preventing hate speech and violence. “They have improved their reporting to police. But you can’t have a commercial dynamic trading on liberty and then go missing when hate speech perverts it into violence and worse, as we’ve seen,” he said.

The businesses have been working with New Zealand authorities to remove traces of the video, including even heavily edited versions shared by news outlets, as they are in violation of local law. On Friday the NZ Department of Internal Affairs said those sharing the video would likely be “committing an offence”.

Facebook has been using artificial intelligence for graphic violence to identify new instances of the video, as well as audio technology to assist where images were not as easily detected.

Mia Garlick, director of policy at Facebook Australia and New Zealand, said work was continuing.

But Tony Jaques, managing ­director of crisis management consultancy Issue Outcomes, said the platforms had done the best they could in the circumstances. He said it would be “effectively­ impossible” for platforms to prevent the spread of footage through regulation.

“The internet, by its nature, never was meant to be controlled,” he said. “The reality is the technology has far outpaced our ability to impose ethical standards and management processes. What started off as a good idea has got out of control and we can’t reverse it, and the ethical standards and moral measurements have been outpaced and they can’t keep up … and I suspect they never will.”