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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:49AM
from the waiting-until-they-try-to-legislate-"abhorent"-text dept.
from the waiting-until-they-try-to-legislate-"abhorent"-text dept.
Australia has rammed through another law requiring “abhorrent” video, audio or still images to be removed within an hour. This will apply to content providers both in and out of Australia as long as the content is available to Australians. Individuals and companies face jail time and/or huge fines if the content is not removed "within a reasonable time". If the content is found to be hosted in Australia then the Australian government must be alerted. This is yet another knee jerk reaction to the NZ shootings which were streamed live online.
Who is paying for someone to be awake at 3am to curate and remove this stuff?
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Australia Passes Law Requiring Social Media to Remove Content Within one Hour
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Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:42AM (28 children)
SoylentNews is not a multi-million dollar company. But we are accessible to Australians, and could conceivably be covered by this law.
But the summary is inaccurate and misleading. The actual article says:
and
We are receiving more and more submissions which have been distorted by the submitter to reflect their own feelings and views, often posted as AC. I know it is not the done thing - but we all need to read TFA before making any comments. And we editors will need to up our game.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:51AM (16 children)
Could we maybe mod stories up and down? Or maybe this has already been discussed...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:53AM
Attempted as a topic (yes, I would like for it to happen), never a subject of S/N-wide consultation, not even an effing poll.
Personally, I feel sorta disappointed, but I'll survive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:56AM (14 children)
If the summary is inaccurate or just plain wrong, then the associated comments are likely to be also skewed unless the person making the comment made the effort to actually read TFA. Thus it follows that the moderation will be based on inaccurate information. There is no requirement in the Australian law to remove unacceptable data from the internet within 1 hour. The title is wrong, the summary is wrong, and the 1 hour is based on a speculative comment made by the Attorney General whilst referring to FB in particular.
The courts will have to decide in each case what is 'reasonable' and what is 'expeditious'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:46AM (7 children)
Without any mean to give feedback on a submitted story before publishing, one won't be able to do anything even if one reads TFA and would be willing to signal the skew in advance.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:19AM (4 children)
It is the editor's role to check the accuracy of summaries against the quoted material. We are currently very stretched and the 2 separate checks per story are not always being done before a story is released. This is the reason that some stories are slipping through the net and having to be changed after release. If you feel strongly about this issue, please consider joining the editorial team and helping out.
It is not (currently) the community's responsibility to check material before it is released. The provision of a "Firehose" facility has been discussed and considered, and it was felt that such a feature could lead to stories being suppressed by malicious actors. By all means raise the issue again if you feel it is now necessary or even desirable, but with our limited staff the software updates will not be possible for several months or more.
If community members read TFA and not just the summary this would also be a non-issue. The discrepancy between the source and the summary would be identified by the first couple of readers and could be flagged in the comments immediately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @01:30PM (3 children)
So why refusing help from others that can't stand as editors but occasionally can signal fishy things?
Yeah, right. It's the firehose or nothing, no other solutions can be imagined or tried.
There is an issue: the cacophony of trolling has support just from the very beginning, TFS is trolling.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:19PM (2 children)
By all means raise the issue again if you feel it is now necessary or even desirable, but with our limited staff the software updates will not be possible for several months or more.
It is your choice that you cannot stand as an editor - sign up and you can. We do not allow ACs to control what people can read and what they cannot, just as they cannot moderate. It is your decision.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @07:20AM (1 child)
It is the availability of spare time to dedicate to it, even more the lack of predictability that stops me offering support as an editor.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 18 2019, @07:29AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:55AM (1 child)
Yeah, just vote it up or down and add comments before it is published
Oops. Forgot this isn't Pipedot
Carry on.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 18 2019, @07:50AM
This is exactly how shills, trolls (and some ACs) could prevent topics that they do not like from ever reaching the front page. We should be prepared to discuss all topics that are appropriate to this site in an honest way whether we support the statements in the TFS/TFA or not. Commenting before a story is released is hardly wise and partly pointless because the story might still be edited significantly before it actually hits the front page. Furthermore, the editors still have to weed out those submissions that are not related to STEM or other topics that we occasionally cover, remove duplicates of stories already released (and sometimes have been covered repeatedly or many months before) and other story management tasks that we are responsible for.
The ideal solution is, I believe, more editors but that is a perennial problem with a site such as ours.
The most recent story I can find on Pipedot is dated 2017. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well for them, did it? Good looking site though....
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:09PM (5 children)
No, the people making the regulatory procedures will do that - the Attorney General's people in other words. The courts will have to decide - for the cases which actually make their way to the courts - whether those regulations meet the criteria of the law. If the AG is saying such things, it's a good sign that the regulation will be that way.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 18 2019, @07:52AM (4 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:35PM (3 children)
You can disagree all you want. It's simply not true. Courts rule only on matters that reach the courts. Regulators are the ones applying the law circularly because they're the regulators. Even when courts make rulings, it'll be the regulators applying those rulings to the regulations.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:49PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:08PM (1 child)
Sorry, again, but that's not true. There are two tests of the matter to show this. First, while courts decide what is proper, that is interpretation not application in the States. I doubt Australian lingo deviates so much that they have such different meanings for those terms. The thing is the Attorney-General's department also can decide what is proper - their opinion can be overruled by the courts, but they still engage in the practice. It's no difference to the end user whether the regulatory point in question came from the courts or AG, unless they plan to contest it in the courts. Otherwise the costs of compliance and not are the same no matter who shaped the regulation.
And when these things make it to the courts, the AG's office will be there to defend their interpretation of the law.
Second, enforcement of the regulation is strictly left to the AG. Courts won't be sending you pulldown orders or verifying that your censorship procedures are reasonably timely.
So my view remains unchanged. The AG engages in the same activities as the court, they just have lower precedent. So by that metric they are applying the law just as well. But then we come to the real point, namely, that applying law is actually the generation and enforcement of regulation, the domain of the AG department.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:11PM
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 17 2019, @01:23PM
But the Attorney General of Australia, the person who gets to decide which companies will be prosecuted for what abhorent videos are and how long they can last (by his standards until the courts give some guidance) felt as reported in TFA that the Christchurch shooting video having lasted for one hour before being pulled was too long. This despite TFA noting that none of the 200 people who watched the livestream reported it to FB at all. That's not a could, but rather a strong indicator that If Only This Had Occurred In Australia that this law would have been applied to it.
I think there's a strong case that the submitter was very much following the gist of the article and what the officials who will be attempting to enforce this law feel.
In other news, Australia's Attorney General is a tool who doesn't understand much but is riding the fear and hysteria train to grab as much power as possible. Film at 11.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 17 2019, @01:43PM (9 children)
If SN received a removal demand, could it guarantee to remove content within 24 months?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:37PM (5 children)
We would probably have to press a panic button to get someone who could remove comments - it is a power only available to a few individuals who might, or might not, be quickly available. We might be able to remove content within a few hours.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 17 2019, @04:40PM (4 children)
Within 24 months it would probably be possible to develop or improve a web based interface for removing comments.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:30PM (2 children)
Easier to just make a regex command I'd think
there is a good start!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 18 2019, @07:54AM
Aristarchus will be pleased to have been left out of that regex!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:35PM
I must object. I have a feeling of being left out somehow.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:12PM
No, it wouldn't. I'd neither write nor merge a any code doing so.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:50PM (2 children)
Unless SN has a business presence in Australia or is hosted there, I fail to see what effect a demand would have. If it was refused, would they stamp their foot a little harder?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:13PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 18 2019, @03:57AM
Thankfully, we also have a community that know what VPN stands for. Which is a good thing because if OZ sends us a nastygram, I'm going to flatly refuse, as an individual, to do a damned thing about it unless the community just wants to see how many ways I can think of to tell them to fuck off, eat a bag of dicks, etc...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.