Social media giants can’t go missing when it comes to hate speech: Shorten

Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says social media “too often it resembles a toxic swamp where wrongdoers can hide and where evil is nurtured”. Picture: Erik Anderson/AAP

OPINION

The social media giants have a commercial dynamic that they sell as liberty but let me be clear: there is no liberty to hate. There is no liberty to practise hate speech.

The social media giants cannot be distant, far removed from the conduct of their platforms.

If a newspaper published some of the things that are allowed on social media platforms, it would be in court.

If individuals at a cafe or a pub spoke in the way that some people are allowed to speak online, there would be a call to the police.

Social media and the internet are fantastic developments, allowing us to be exposed to ideas, to connect, to learn and to break down isolation.

But the big media platforms have an obligation to better monitor and prevent hate speech.

A platform like Facebook goes to potential advertisers and says “we know everything about the users of Facebook, we can tell you everything so that you can geo-target and you can market to them”.

Well, if that’s your business model, fair enough; but you can’t go missing when it comes to hate speech.

We have to wonder why it is that when it comes to making a dollar, the social media giants know everything about their users. But when it comes to detecting, preventing and discouraging hatred, they quickly turn into Pontius Pilate and wash their hands of the whole affair.

That’s simply not good enough. We’ve got to work together to tackle this problem and the platforms must improve their reporting to police.

You can’t have a commercial dynamic trading on liberty but go missing when hate speech corrupts it. That can lead to the sort of appalling violence we saw in Christchurch.

Let me be very frank. We wouldn’t allow television or print media to publish or broadcast some of the filth, rubbish, violence and perversion which is commonplace on social media. There can’t be one standard for traditional media and some sort of leave pass for new technology. We have to get the balance right.

Social media is a marvellous tool that has the potential to empower us, but too often it resembles a toxic swamp where wrongdoers can hide and where evil is nurtured.

For many years, newspapers, television and radio news services have had to exercise caution before they published. Too often, social media platforms publish first and then take down later.

I think it is time that they, like the rest of our media, worked out how they decided that some things are too dangerous and offensive to publish before they get the chance to cause harm.

If you help create the swamp, you can’t go missing when evil things start crawling out of it.

This opinion piece by Federal Opposition leader Bill Shorten was first published in the Herald Sun