How the Government Plans to Put a Stop to Cyberbullying in 2021

The eSafety Commissioner has backed the government's proposed bill.

If you’ve ever experienced cyberbullying or trolls online, you know first-hand the negative impact that it can have on your mental health and your overall life.

With online anonymity being more common now and new social media platforms popping up all over the place, it’s often hard to figure out what is actually considered cyberbullying, how to get it taken down, and how to stop that person from doing it again in the future.

Because of this, the Australian government plans to step in this year and introduce new reforms that will put pressure on social media platforms and perpetrators.

In December last year, the federal government proposed a bill that would see social media companies and internet service providers blocked if they failed to remove harmful content within a 24-hour time frame.

At the moment, social media platforms are required to remove harmful content in 48 hours. This new bill will cut that time in half.

The proposed bill, which is still being ironed out until about February, requires platforms to remove severely harmful, abusive or bullying content as soon as possible or face restrictions and other penalties within Australia.

Essentially, if websites or apps like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter ignore take down notices for serious harmful content, the government will have the power to enforce search engines like Google or the App Store to cut off access to that service.

This could mean that there is limited access to these platforms in Australia and therefore a loss of a lot of valuable users from the social media site's point of view.

Australia’s eSaftey Commissioner Julie Inman Grant announced her support for the bill in an interview with A Current Affair on Tuesday.

"What this legislation also does is it says, 'You cannot continue to allow bad actors to reappear on the sites without repercussion,'" she told A Current Affair.

"So, we’re trying to hold the platforms to account to release their own reforms to build tools in to make it a safer experience for users but also to prevent abuse from happening in the first place.

"We’re here to hold them to account, we’re also here to serve as a safety net for our citizens when things do get missed or fall through the cracks and that’s the role that we’ve been playing with the youth based cyberbullying scheme where we have a 100 per cent compliance rate with social media sites, so every time we’ve asked them to take down a serious cyberbullying piece of content they’ve done so but there’s more that the platforms need to do in terms of enforcing their own policies."

Ms Inman Grant also explained how the new legislation will help combat the problem of anonymous trolls or bullies getting away with harmful online behaviour.

"Anonymity on the internet is very challenging but it’s not an insurmountable challenge and one thing that this legislation will do will give us more powers to compel basic device information," she said.

"Our investigators are very experienced in investigating the deepest darkest recesses of the web, that’s what they’re trained to do and so I do think this will give us a much better unmasking ability.

"It shouldn’t matter whether the identity of the abusive account is known, if it’s violating the platforms policies, they should be suspending the accounts and taking them down."

The bill also plans to give stronger protection for adults and more power to the eSafety Commissioner.

If passed, the eSafety Commissioner could have the power to reveal identities behind trolls or fake profiles that share negative content, as well as new fast website blocking powers in the event of a crisis like the spread of terror material.

The plans listed out in the bill so far will outline a set of world first core online safety expectations.

Back in 2020, the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma got us talking about the impacts of social media platforms and the internet on mental health.

A lot of users ended up deleting their accounts on services like Facebook and Twitter due to the way these platforms use the data that they collect, but these services have since regained or maintained user numbers and cyberbullying is still an ongoing problem.

If you’re struggling with online bullying or trolls, do what you can to prevent that person or persons from contacting you.

Ignore, block and report that person and their harmful content as soon as you can, and contact support services if you need.

Header Image: Vladimir Vladimirov via Getty Images