Facebook grilled on violent content

REPRESENTATIVES from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat will face questioning over whether they are doing enough in the removal of “violent and violence inciting content” on their platforms by a powerful federal parliamentary committee this week.

It is part of a review of “abhorrent violent material” laws, introduced in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack in 2019 being livestreamed on Facebook.

Law enforcement parliamentary committee chairman Julian Simmonds (pictured) said the efforts of social media giants to moderate content were “comical” given the profits they made.

Mr Simmonds, the MP for Ryan, pointed to comments from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who testified before the US congress last month.

“For a global company that makes $10bn annually in profit, Facebook’s efforts to moderate its platforms of hateful, harmful or violent content are comical,” he said.

“Its own internal research released by Ms Haugen estimates they action as little as 3-5 per cent of hateful content, and 0.6 per cent of violent and inciting material.

“Australians expect these companies to act swiftly in their interest to remove this violent content as they are required to, but right now we are seeing a lot of platitudes and not enough action occurring by big tech.”

In a submission to the inquiry, Facebook, now known as Meta, said it had more than 40,000 people working on safety and security and had invested $13bn into the area since 2016.

There is currently no specific time frame for internet companies to comply with a take down order from the Australian Federal Police.

Instead they are required to act within a “reasonable time”, which is determined by a range of factors, including the type and volume of the material.