Australian Law Makers Poses Social Media Regulations

Australian parliament is proposing potential laws that will regulate social media. If the plan is approved, Australia could regulate social media on a federal level. Mediapost reports, “The ‘Online Safety’ paper proposes the appointment of a ‘Children’s e-Safety Commissioner’ with authority over social networks and social network users, extending to civil penalties and fines.” The need for regulation has arisen because of cyber bullying and protecting children’s security online. That is obviously an excellent reason for regulations; however, the fear is that regulations will spill over into business’ corner and increase advertising spend while also making it difficult to segment and target audiences. A large portion of legislation burden will fall on the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Since they are both US companies, enforcing regulations will be tricky at best.

The concept of social media regulation is not a new idea; the government has been talking about social media regulation since 2012. As more and more young people are online and social networks of all kinds are growing in popularity there will likely be more need for the government to step in if cyber bullying continues and if children’s online safety is in jeopardy. If the plan is passed into effect, a social network would receive a request to remove harmful content and given a time frame to do so. If a social network fails to remove content that is deemed harmful after being requested to do so, the complaint can then be escalated to the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner who can then issue penalties.

Penalties are described, as follows:

• the Commissioner issuing public statements about numbers of complaints received relating to participating social media sites, as well as publishing statements about non-compliance with notices to remove material;
• the Commissioner issuing formal warnings to individuals and participating social media sites;
• the Commissioner issuing infringement notices to individuals, which may include an appropriate fine. Careful consideration will be given to circumstances under which the Commissioner might serve an infringement notice to an individual under 18 years old;
• civil penalties for participating social media sites; and
• the Commissioner issuing public advice that a particular site is not safe for children to use.

This is definitely a topic we will be keeping an eye on and how it relates to brands and business that use social media channels to market themselves.