Social media giants face the Royal Commission
The commission's focus shifted to social media companies, exposing serious questions over accountability and online hate.
This week the Royal Commission turned its gaze from the victims of online hate to those who enable it – the platforms themselves. What it heard should alarm every Australian.
Meta admitted it has shifted from proactively hunting down hateful content to sitting back and waiting for users to report it. The result? Action against hateful content on Facebook fell 79 per cent. On Instagram, 73 per cent. Its own global policy director could not explain why. Facebook in Australia, meanwhile, claims it bears no responsibility for content moderation at all.
TikTok cannot say whether antisemitism is rising or falling on its platform, because while it logs content that violates its rules, it does not record who the hatred targets.
Livestreaming platform Kick acts on fewer than one in 100 reports of hate – and its own general counsel could not say whether a stream declaring “Jews are evil rats and subhumans” would breach its rules.
These platforms, who profit from every click and every hour of our attention, cannot adequately answer the most basic questions about the hate flourishing on their watch.
As for the regulator meant to hold them to account, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner told the commission she has been handed “a fly swatter to kill a swarm of killer bees” – 36 investigators against a tide of hate, powers she likened to a game of whack-a-mole.
It is no wonder that in The AJN‘s poll this week, a staggering 95 per cent of respondents said social media companies are utterly failing to remove harmful content. Just two per cent thought they were doing a good job. These are people who engaged with the poll on social media itself – who see the vile hate on these platforms go unchecked with their own eyes, who have reported it and been told it does not breach standards.
What the mounting evidence points to is a reckoning. These companies have built a business model that treats our safety as an afterthought.
We have flagged the content. We have filed the reports. Now it is time for these social media companies to act.
Because after 15 dead last December, the cost of clicks can never again be lives.