Online Trolls • Scott Emerson Drive Show
1 December 2021 3:54 pm
Online trolls are becoming more and more common every day, regardless of social media platform, and the Australian Government is attempting to tackle the issue with new legislation.
In another busy week of social media, I was lucky enough to call in for a quick chat on the Scott Emerson Drive Show.
If you have spent any time at all online, you have almost certainly experienced or witnessed some form of online trolling on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
In a recent announcement, the Australian government looks set to introduce some pretty strong anti-troll legislation, in an effort to reduce online trolling.
These new laws would force social media platforms to collect the personal details of new and current users. That personal information could then be accessed by courts during defamation cases. (Of course, we all know social media platforms would never collect personal information about their users, right?). *rolls eyes*
While something certainly needs to be done about online trolling, these recent announcements seem like a bit of window dressing to me. This new legislation seems like a bunch of regulation without very much substance behind it at all.
Many legal experts have already come out saying that this new legislation will do little to curb the rates of online trolling and bullying because the laws specifically focus on defamation.
We should be able to hold people accountable for what they do and say online, but we all know defamation lawsuits aren’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
Additionally, it will be interesting to see how these laws will be implemented because we’re dealing with massive multinational companies like Facebook.
If you ask me, the answer to online trolling isn’t more government regulation online. While some people may never change, we need more education around how people should behave online and how their actions can seriously impact the people they’re digitally interacting with.
What are your thoughts on these new laws? Let me know what you think in the comments.
Did you miss my chat with Scott Emerson? Fear not! You can listen to everything I had to say down below!