PM declares war on online trolls

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has signalled he will raise the issue with world leaders at the G20 this month.

For the first time, it means citizens using anonymous social media accounts to defame and troll could be named, shamed and brought before the courts.

“We must hold social media platforms to account. They’re publishers, not just platforms,” he said.

“Particularly when they allow people to anonymously go on their platforms and publish their vile rubbish, whether that is to bully a young girl or target people online or to push defamatory statements out against people, and to do so anonymously with impunity.”

But Mr Morrison is yet to outline how exactly how this will work in practice.

Earlier this week, Mr Morrison told 2DayFM’s Erin Molan, who has campaigned again to online bullying, that he was determined to act.

“We all know how social media companies use data and then they target them and they bombard them. We want to protect kids,” he said.

“So I’m off to the G20 tonight before going to Glasgow. And one of the issues I’m going to be raising is these platforms are going to be treated like publishers, and we can’t have all of these trolls online.

“If you want to go and say something online, well you’ve got to say who you are.”

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said the government was serious about reform.

“The motivation is now there at the federal level in Australia, at the highest level in the United States, in other corners of the globe, to say: ‘we’ve had enough, you can’t treat us like fools. You think we’re joking, we’re not’,” Mr Joyce said. “This time, something’s going to happen.”

The Prime Minister has previously slammed the “coward‘s palace” of social media in the wake of vile, false rumours that Barnaby Joyce’s daughter was in a relationship with the outgoing NSW Nationals leader.

Mr Morrison told reporters that the community could expect the government to do more “in this space” because it was unacceptable to spread false rumours about people online.

“Social media has become a coward‘s palace where people can go on there, not say who they are, destroy people’s lives, and say the most foul and offensive things to people, and do so with impunity,’’ he said.