Anti-troll or anti-platform? New Commonwealth defamation legislation proposed to deal with social media services
If passed, the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill 2021 (Cth) will significantly expand the liability of social media platforms for defamatory posts by their users, deny the platforms recourse to the innocent dissemination defence and make access to a new safe-harbour defence conditional on unmasking anonymous end-users (which raises complex practical and ideological issues, with implications for all web users).