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The content is irrelevant. One country should not censor the entire web. I don’t care how terrible it is. It is easy to say a stabbing is bad but what about a criticism or a leader or hard discussions.
I don’t live in Australia but yet they were trying to enforce there legislation on me. Australia is very much not the only country that is guilty of this. It is one win in the bigger picture.
If a international platform wants to host something questionable they should have the right to. If it violates local law they just remove it from the specific country.
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I am not saying that this content should be allowed or disallowed. All I am saying is that one shouldn’t have jurisdiction over any country. If they want to have it removed via official government channels. Just don’t try to force it world wide.
Also you are falling into the trap of censorship. Once you start mandating it it is a very slippery slope. It starts with public safety and ends with attacks on journalism. I can’t and shouldn’t control what happens in Australia but in my own country I will continue to support free speech as it is critical for democracy.
Additionally Elon was not even mentioned in this article. I’m sure he knew about it but he didn’t comment publicly. Just because you hate some billionaire doesn’t mean he plotting.
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Each country is free to create whatever rules they want for their country, but for people that don’t live in those countries then there is nothing more to say. There can be voluntary international cooperation (like there is with copyrighted works) but if I live somewhere that isn’t part of that international cooperation then like it or not, I am free to violate your laws all day.
Exactly
Also I think this kind of behavior could strain international relations.
I agree, but I think it is more complex than that. There are limits to free speech already. I agree that no one country should be able to censor others, but what about content that is illegally produced in that country.
So if terrorist training videos were made in Australia, could banning them from distribution mean they could prosecute fitter for distributing them? How about csam? How about China prosecutes for ibfro about Tiananmen. What about CSAM?
So objectively there are things some countries would want banned, but not all. Some that all might agree to ban. Classifying it might help but might that be more of an invasion of privacy? The web is built on lots of open protocols that assume good actors and no malicious intent. We are now adding protocols that increase privacy and security on top. Even something like the fediverse is a good example of the trade off between being public and being anonymous and being private. You can’t have it all.
Geoblocking is a better solution. Just don’t store that content in Australia and block it from coming in.
Everything on the internet is effectively permanent anyway
Holding social media companies responsible for the content they host is a better solution in my view. We hold newspapers responsible. Why not social media? Yes, moderation is expensive but they are wildly profitable, musk aside.
They don’t need to moderate everything, as the content volume is high, but they certainly could manually moderate all content that reaches a certain threshd. They choose not to and hide behind their users sharing as a reason.
That would be very bad for free speech. Companies would not take any chances and would remove any content that could remotely bring them trouble. I’m sure there would be lots of bad takedowns and it would be abused just like the DMCA.
Depending on private companies for free speech is bad for free speech in and of itself. So either course has negatives, which means the course with leqsr negative outcomes is best. If they over moderate, they lose users. If they undermoderate they face fines. I’m sure the market force will mean they do whatever is most profitable.
The eSafety commission argued that “well everyone just uses VPNs anyway so it won’t matter”
As an Australian I am happy we are protected by this form of government censorship, making it harder for them to sweep other atrocities under the rug.I do wish however social media would be more active in restricting graphic content.Edit: I read the article again, sadly it was a voluntary retraction of the take down order, not a law preventing them.
I do not have any obligation to follow the laws in a foreign country. It doesn’t matter how graphics or controversial it is. A country takedown order should be country specific. It is an overreach to try to do it world wide.
I think it’s overreach inside the county too. There has been far too many events in recent history that have been surpressed because it would undermine the peoples view of the ruling government
Well that isn’t something a foreign power should decide. That is up to the Australians
