Scott Morrison blasts ‘cowardly’ online trolls and tech titans

Scott Morrison has flagged recognising tech titans as publishers if they do not start handing over the identity of anonymous online trolls.

Scott Morrison in Canberra on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

Scott Morrison has flagged recognising tech titans as publishers if they do not start handing over the identity of anonymous online trolls, opening up the likes of Facebook and Twitter to costly defamation action.

The Prime Minister said on Thursday he would not allow online trolls to continue acting with impunity in the “coward’s palace” of social media , as Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce attacked the social media companies’ failure to stop recent online smears against his family.

Mr Morrison’s attacks on the tech titans come as state ­attorneys-general in principle backed federal Attorney-General Michaelia Cash’s push to close legal loopholes that have exposed governments and media companies to legal action over third party social media comments.

In Canberra on Thursday, Mr Morrison said his government would be “leaning further into” its hardline stance against online trolls and tech titans who fail to act on offensive content.

“Social media has become a coward’s palace where people can go on there, not say who they are, destroy people’s lives … Now that’s not a free country where that happens,” he said.

“And, you know, the companies, if they’re not going to say who (online trolls) are, well they’re not a platform any more, they’re a publisher. They’re a publisher.

“Australia has been more forward thinking and advanced when it comes to holding big ­social media companies to account … We’ve been a world leader on this and we intend to set the pace.”

His comments came after Senator Cash urged state and territory attorneys-general this week to take a nationally consistent ­approach to digital defamation reform.

The High Court in September ruled that publishers could be liable for defamatory posts posted by commentators on their social media pages – even ones they do not know are there – and opened the way for a complaint against major media organisations from former Northern Territory youth detainee Dylan Voller.

Law Council of Australia president Jacoba Brasch endorsed the government’s reform push and said the legal onus for defamatory online content should be on the original posters.

“An internet intermediary who is not the originator of a ­defamatory publication is often unable to rely on defences that would otherwise be available to the originator, such as truth, as the intermediary does not have the information that is available to the originator,” Ms Brasch said.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus - who wrote to Senator Cash on the need for defamation reform last week - said national leadership was required after the High Court’s ruling.

“In my letter to Senator Cash, I specifically cited the important role that former commonwealth attorney-general Philip Ruddock played in pushing state and territory governments to agree to uniform defamation laws in 2004,” he said.

A Council of Attorneys-­General discussion paper – which will feed into a bigger review into the nation’s defamation framework – has given the law officers a blueprint for changes.

The options could effectively reverse the Voller case by providing a default defamation defence that digital platforms and Facebook page administrators are not primary distributors of material posted by third parties.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman, who has led the attorneys-general review of the ­nation’s defamation laws for nearly a year, said a national ­approach was the right one.

“The internet is no respecter of borders so national uniformity in the reforms’ substance is highly desirable,” he said.

Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said the final ­reforms “seek to strike a balance between protecting individual reputations without placing unreasonable limits on the freedom of expression”.

Queensland’s Attorney-General Sharon Fentiman also backed the need for reform.

A Facebook spokeswoman on Thursday said the global social media giant would co-operate with the attorneys-generals’ ­efforts to update defamation laws.