Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unlike a growing number of people, I don't believe that Facebook is evil, but, like Tom and Daisy in TheGreat Gatsby, they are a careless company. Facebook smashes things up—democracy and social cohesion—and then retreats back into its money-making business and lets other people clean up the mess it's made. All too often Facebook has refused to act to prevent imminent harms until it's too late, and it's doing so again today.

I recently wrote to Facebook asking how, after the member for Hughes was banned from Facebook for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, he is back on the platform as leader of the United Australia Party. Facebook has previously said that it will take down new pages 'in the voice of the previously banned individual'. Well, of the 19 videos on the UAP Facebook page, 14 are of the member for Hughes. He voices them, he authorises them under Australian electoral law and he is spending tens of thousands of dollars advertising them, including a video citing incomplete extracts from the TGA's adverse event report of COVID-19 vaccinations that the TGA has described as 'seriously misleading'. This video has been viewed 220,000 times.

Facebook's response is that all of this fine because the UAP's Facebook page has 'a different purpose'. This position is a joke. It can't be taken seriously. The member for Hughes can say whatever he likes in here, but he's not entitled to the algorithmic amplification that advantages the divisive and the outrageous. I am sick of long statements from Facebook that say a lot but ultimately do nothing. It's time they enforced their community standards transparently and proactively.