How to tackle anti-social media
IT’S NOT EASY, BUT THERE ARE STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO SHUT DOWN FALSE CLAIMS
When scandalous rumours began circulating about his daughter on social media, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister went on the offensive.
Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce branded the online gossip “rubbish” and slammed tech giants Twitter and Facebook for failing to remove the claims.
“It’s no good that these platforms just say ‘sorry, it’s too hard to control’,” Joyce said at the time. “Well, it’s not too hard for you to collect your billions of dollars from it.”
The incident is one being held up as an example in the federal government’s push for greater regulation of social media, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison calling online platforms a “coward’s palace” for anonymous trolls.
But what can you really do to shut down false claims spreading about you online? And what laws should be in place to protect individuals?
Swinburne University social media senior lecturer Dr Belinda Barnet says shutting down online harassment, innuendo and rumours is incredibly difficult for an individual to achieve.
“It’s almost impossible (to get something removed) unless you can show the tweet or post is threatening your life or safety,” Barnet says. “You can report it to the platform, but they’re unlikely to take it down unless it’s making a threat to you.”
Despite this, the quickest potential solution for people who find themselves being smeared or defamed on social media is to report it to the platforms directly. But that process is challenging, she says, as offensive messages have to fit into one of a limited number of categories, will most likely be assessed by an algorithm, and are unlikely to be removed unless they include threats of violence.
The solution to this problem, she says, rather than new defamation laws, is better moderation from the tech giants.
“If you’re the victim of trolling or harassment, it would be nice if you didn’t have to face a hall of click-wrap mirrors to report it and get something done,” Barnet says. “All of the platforms are guilty of that. They could make their reporting mechanisms a lot easier to use and more transparent and perhaps less automated.
“That would involve Facebook hiring more human beings.”
Defamation specialist Roger Blow, from Perth’s Cove Legal, says changing Australian laws to make it easier to sue for online defamation could be challenging as the legal system is already swamped with social media cases.
“The majority of cases in courts these days have a social media element to them,” he says. “It is a major cause of modern defamation actions.”
But Blow says individuals who are suffering serious harassment and rumour-mongering online can engage a lawyer to help them and issue take-down notices.
“If it was specific people who were doing clear reputational damage, you could contact those people directly,” he says. “I would be issuing an urgent concerns notice to say you have cause to have published the following statements, they give rise to the following imputations, you need to take them down, issue an apology, and then we would be talking about costs as well.”
Blow also recommends victims target the first, most widely shared Facebook post or tweet as its deletion would also remove any comments posted beneath it.
Ultimately, though, he says social media defamation issues are difficult to pursue and victims should undertake a “cost-benefit analysis” before pursuing lawsuits, which can come at a large financial and emotional cost.