Examples of this guidance, relayed by the Guardian, give some sense of the impossibility of the moderators’ task:
Remarks such as ‘Someone shoot Trump’ should be deleted, because as a head of state he is in a protected category. But it can be permissible to say: ‘To snap a bitch’s neck, make sure to apply all your pressure to the middle of her throat’, or ‘fuck off and die’ because they are not regarded as credible threats.
Videos of violent deaths, while marked as disturbing, do not always have to be deleted because they can help create awareness of issues such as mental illness.
Some photos of non-sexual physical abuse and bullying of children do not have to be deleted or ‘actioned’ unless there is a sadistic or celebratory element.
Photos of animal abuse can be shared, with only extremely upsetting imagery to be marked as ‘disturbing’ …
Videos of abortions are allowed, as long as there is no nudity.
Facebook will allow people to livestream attempts to self-harm because it ‘doesn’t want to censor or punish people in distress’.
In December 2015, Facebook gave a commitment to the German government that it would remove criminal hate speech from the platform within twenty-four hours; however, a yearlong German government study reported by the New York Times recently found that in some months Facebook managed to delete only 39 per cent in the time frame sought by the German authorities, and that its performance had been getting worse in recent months. In March, the German government proposed legislation in this area, with the threat of fines up to 50 million.
Facebook had already announced plans to hire an additional 3000 moderators, and Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, told the Guardian, ‘We feel responsible to our community to keep them safe and we feel very accountable. It’s absolutely our responsibility to keep on top of it.’ As ever, the community will have to take their word for it – and rely on unauthorised leaks to the media for the details.
*
The inquiry into the future of public interest journalism, driven by senators Sam Dastyari, Scott Ludlam, Nick Xenophon and Jacqui Lambie, was set up to examine ‘the impact of search engines, social media and disinformation on journalism in Australia’. At public hearings in May, a parade of speakers explained the adverse effects.
Union representative Paul Murphy explained that 2500 journalism jobs had disappeared in Australia since 2011, and that pay rates for freelancers had also declined significantly. The inquiry heard examples of regulations that applied to the Australian media but not to the tech companies, such as those relating to local content and media ownership, and heard time and again about the lack of tax paid by the tech companies. Local media had obligations, social, legal and cultural; Facebook and Google traded on the local media’s content, smashed their business models in the process, and gave little back to the community in return. How to remedy this is what the inquiry was set up to explore.
Facebook reported that it earned $326.9 million of revenue in Australia in 2016. Google reported revenue of $882 million last year. But these figures radically under-represent the total amount they collect from Australia, which is widely regarded as at least three or four times larger. For 2016, Facebook and Google reported tax bills of $3.3 million and $16.6 million respectively. A pittance. (Perhaps Australia should count itself lucky: in the UK in 2014, Facebook paid £4327 in tax, less than what the average worker paid.)
‘Until this year,’ wrote journalist Michael West, ‘Google and Facebook entertained a corporate structure that booked the billions of dollars of revenue they made in Australia directly offshore.’ Facebook sales were booked to an associated entity in Ireland, and referred to as the ‘purchase of advertising inventory’. Now, Facebook has declared itself to be a reseller of local advertising inventory, and the federal government has declared that its new Diverted Profits Tax – the ‘Google tax’ – will reap billions of extra dollars in revenue from multinationals over coming years, though such projections generally rely on multinationals not altering their tax arrangements in response, and not fighting them out in court for the next decade.
Professor Peter Fray, Professor of Journalism Practice at the University of Technology Sydney, summed up the problem for journalism: ‘There is no doubt there are issues around tax for Google and Facebook and they should pay their fair share, but I cannot see how publishers, journalists or politicians can blame Google and Facebook for the fact that digital revenue streams did not, do not and will not replace those of print or that in digital environments audiences have multiple choices for content on demand 24/7.’
Put a different way, how could extracting a reasonable amount of tax from Google and Facebook save local journalism and a collapsing business model?
Only by funnelling that tax revenue into journalism. For which no mechanisms yet exist, and to which the objections are obvious. Historically, there’s been ample reason to fear government involvement in private media, and little reason to propose or support it. But how quickly things have changed.
‘The economic model no longer works,’ Sam Dastyari tells me. ‘So either government intervenes and finds a way to support it – without going so far as to tip the scales of what is and isn’t journalism – or we let it die. There is no third option.’
Independent senator Nick Xenophon is wary of the term ‘intervention’ when it comes to a government response; nevertheless, he agrees that ‘doing nothing is not an option’.
‘It’s more a case of government levelling a playing field which has been tipped into a state of imbalance and dysfunction by the advent of disruptors,’ he clarifies.
‘This is not like the horse-and-buggy and automobile argument of 120 years ago. This is a case where they are piggybacking off traditional media to make a quid. And that should be reflected in some way in a compensatory mechanism.
‘I don’t want us to end up in a world where we just have so-called citizen journalists and a whole range of bloggers, where there are no standards, where anything goes.’
Scott Ludlam concurs. ‘There is a public policy role here … because the market’s wiping these [media] entities out. The market couldn’t give a shit whether there’s strong and independent and diverse journalism going on in a society.’
‘I don’t think we’ll have general daily newspapers on a weekday within the next two or three years,’ the Greens senator adds. The loss of dedicated professional reporters in health, education, state politics, arts, science, environment or social affairs will have incalculable effects.
*
Do we still have a democracy capable of creatively moderating the worst effects of the market? With just a few exceptions, governments have shown little inclination to take on corporate interests to protect civil society, or to intervene to prevent market oligopolies.
Looking at the operations of Facebook around the world, you could easily conclude that Zuckerberg makes the rules.
Peter Fray, also a former editor and chief publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and editor of the Canberra Times and the Sunday Age, warned the Senate inquiry that media independence would be at stake under a direct subsidy model, where payments go straight from government to the media. This is a concern shared by the senators, who each stress to me the importance of maintaining the independence and diversity of the media.
‘It’s not an attempt by the state to control the media,’ says Ludlam. ‘It’s a genuine inquiry into how we can support [it].’
One of the key proposals being canvassed is a levy on Facebook and Google, which will be used to pay for public interest journalism. Dastyari, Xenophon, Ludlam and Lambie are all open to this idea. (Liberal senator James Paterson, also a member of the select committee, is not.)
‘That would free up millions of dollars to further public interest journalism,’ says Xenophon.
How the proceeds of such a levy might be disbursed will be the subject of considerable debate in coming months. One method that’s been raised i
s a European-style grants council, in which a panel appointed by government decides how money is allocated. However, there are already reservations among the committee members. ‘Who determines the grants?’ asks Dastyari. ‘Why do you get a grant and someone else doesn’t? How independent is it?’
The Labor senator believes the tax system is the best way of supporting the industry, whether it’s tax breaks for individuals buying news subscriptions or those who make donations or other investments in journalism. The fact that Xenophon, Ludlam and Paterson are also open to such an idea implies broad cross-party acceptance.
‘What we’re talking about,’ Dastyari adds, ‘is actually quite a radical rethink of the role of government as it comes to journalism.’
Xenophon is also keen to explore what he calls the ‘copyright approach’ to supporting media, via the Competition and Consumer Act. He says a formula should be developed by which the use and sharing of intellectual property is valued and compensated fairly.
The obvious challenge all are weighing up is how to define public interest journalism. ‘Where do you draw the line?’ asks Dastyari. ‘Is food blogging journalism?’ Is opinion a form of journalism? Television news and current affairs?
‘I think the organisations likely to take advantage of it are not necessarily the ones that most advocates have in mind,’ Paterson also warns. ‘I suspect the first people to seek tax-deductible funds to fund a news service are those seeking to promote a particular world view. On the left, I’d expect to see a GetUp! News, Greenpeace News and maybe Asylum Seeker Resource Centre News. On the right I think we’d see an Institute of Public Affairs News, Australian Christian Lobby News and Business Council of Australia News.’
Any definition, emphasises Xenophon, will need to ensure that an organisation’s dominant purpose is to provide news and opinion and that it’s not the arm of an advocacy organisation.
The committee has until December to publish its final report, but it’s already clear that these are the key questions exercising the minds of committee members – not whether public interest journalism needs saving, or even whether government should play a role.
‘I suspect we’re going to end up with a whole menu of things that ideally could work well together,’ says Ludlam.
Regardless of what happens next, it is a remarkable shift in public debate.
The talk about the collapse of newsrooms in Australia has until recently tended to focus on newspapers and magazines. It’s becoming obvious that television broadcasters both free-to-air and cable are under major pressure too. In mid June, Channel Ten went into administration soon after reporting a $232 million loss driven by flagging advertising revenue.
The federal government promises to overhaul media ownership laws and scrap some of the constraints on the big media companies, leading to more concentration and presumably greater efficiencies for them. But it voted against the establishment of the Senate’s journalism inquiry and shows little enthusiasm for reining in the tech giants. The task of protecting the diversity of the Australian news media remains beyond the scope of its ambition. For the moment, it’s up to others.
*
‘History,’ writes Zuckerberg portentously, ‘is the story of how we’ve learned to come together in ever greater numbers – from tribes to cities to nations. At each step, we built social infrastructure like communities, media and governments to empower us to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.’
I return to the Facebook page to read Zuckerberg’s essay one last time, and a message pops up on my normally dormant account. Citing security concerns and unusual activity, it requests that I prove – with photo identification – that I am who I say I am. I hesitate.
‘Today we are close to taking our next step.’
And as Zuckerberg runs through touted improvements and inspirational innovations, ever so casually he drops this: ‘Research suggests the best solutions for improving discourse may come from getting to know each other as whole people instead of just opinions – something Facebook may be uniquely suited to do.’ It’s so neatly incorporated you barely notice it. We ‘whole people’ and Facebook are suddenly indivisible.
The Art of Dependency
Micheline Lee
When I was eighteen and my disability had progressed to the stage where I could longer push myself in a manual wheelchair, a man in a van brought me an electric wheelchair. Actually, it was more like a bulky three-wheeled scooter. He slapped a sticker with a serial number on the plastic orange bonnet that covered the front wheel. He told me that it was the property of the state and should only be driven on covered surfaces.
Oh how I loved it the moment I sat in the chair and pressed Go. All the worry and the million steps between my destination and how I would get there disappeared. I couldn’t help laughing, zooming along, starting and stopping with a flick of the lever, taking myself where I wanted. People might have thought I was delirious.
I was in first-year law at Monash University and lived in a student college across a seven-lane road from the campus. For the first six months, before I got my electric chair, I was on the constant lookout for people to push me in my manual chair. I had only enough strength in my arms to shift myself a few metres on smooth level ground. At about eight a.m., I would position myself outside my room, waiting to nab some student coming down the corridor to push me to the dining hall. After gulping down breakfast, I would do the rounds, asking who was leaving for the university and whether they could push me on their way.
Once I was on campus, the tough part was finding someone to push me back to the college at the end of my classes. Mostly I relied on students from my latest class or passers-by. The college was often out of their way, and it could take them thirty minutes to walk there and back. Most of those I waylaid were kind and warm; one even asked me out. Some had another place they had to be. No worries, I said, I’ll ask someone else. But it became more difficult each time I had to approach someone else, and I grew more nervous and beggar-like each time I asked.
A rare few clearly felt put-upon. One of these surprised me, a slender woman with blow-waved hair whom I thought I recognised from a law class and saw as a peer. She would not look me in the eye when I asked but immediately stepped behind me, grabbed the handles and started pushing. She let out an annoyed huff. I said, it sounds like you might be busy, that’s OK, I can ask someone else. But she kept on pushing, fast and, it seemed from the jerking and the huffing, furiously. Arriving at the college, she gave me one last shove, turned around and walked away without saying a word.
That electric wheelchair liberated me – as long as there were no steps in the way, and as long as it didn’t break down. But it did break down, often. It sometimes took weeks to fix. I dreaded facing the man from the state government agency. He would shake his head, warn me that a chair can only be replaced every seven years and say, What have you been doing with it? I did take it over grass, of course I did. And, yes, I rammed kerbs – it was the only way to get over them.
Every year, more motor neurones died, my muscles wasted, my breathing weakened. With each part of my body that froze, the more my electric chair and other equipment would loom, needed, vital. An anxiety grew in me.
Six months after I got my electric chair, I applied to an international host program. I underplayed my disability and didn’t mention I used a wheelchair. A host family in Germany and another in France invited me to stay. I took only the manual wheelchair, leaving the electric chair behind. On seeing me in a wheelchair, the host in Stuttgart still took me in, but the one in Grenoble withdrew. I was left skint, without any supports and with no place to go. It was the position I feared. It was also the position I had put myself into. My lone travels began.
Three years later, back in Australia, I started to go out with David*. He was able-bodied. There was a beach we had discovered with high tides that flowed over the sand, making it firm enough to take my wheelchair. One hot, still afternoon, we were dismayed to find our usually bare beach
teeming with people. We weaved our way to a vacant patch of sand, and he spread out our towels and lifted me down from my wheelchair. Too quickly, he let go of me and I nearly toppled backwards. We were out of kilter, aware of all the surrounding eyes on us. Without telling me what he was doing, he pushed my empty wheelchair to the edge of the sand, hid it behind a shrub, and returned to lie down next to me.
Later I asked, Why did you do that, are you ashamed of me being disabled? And he said, I was just putting it out of the way, it was none of their business. Right there and then, though, I said nothing. I wanted only to lie on that crowded beach, one body among many.
With David around, I did not have to worry about how I could get to the toilet next, or whether I had enough energy to pull a dress off over my head, or that I might fall transferring from my electric chair. Not only that, he took me bushwalking on his back. Together we climbed mountains! We were in love. Still, I worried that I needed him more than he needed me.
I told myself that he would come to his senses eventually. It would be natural for him to regret that he had not chosen a woman who was vigorous and able, and only duty and pity would make him stay with me. He would then deserve those looks he only got from people when he was with me, the ones we laughed about, those ‘what a good Samaritan you are’ looks.
The Best Australian Essays 2017 Page 13
