Australia is to become the first country in the world to introduce jail terms and multi-million-dollar fines for social media giants that do not quickly remove violent material.
In what is expected to be the final week of parliament before the federal election, the government will seek to put two new sets of offences in the criminal code.
It will be a criminal offence for social media platforms not to remove abhorrent violent material quickly.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the new legislation has come in response to the Christchurch attacks.
“Big social media companies have a responsibility to take every possible action to ensure their technology products are not exploited by murderous terrorists,” Mr Morrison said in a statement.
“It should not just be a matter of just doing the right thing. It should be the law. And that is what my government will be doing next week to force social media companies to get their act together and work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies to defuse the threat their technologies can present to the safety of Australians."
