Australian Senate committee recommends bans on Chinese social media apps

An Australian Senate Committee has recommended banning Chinese social media apps in the land down under, on grounds the Communist Party of China uses them to spread propaganda and misinformation. The Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media yesterday filed its final report [PDF] which outlines the reason …

[Winkypop]

Ban ‘em

Ban ‘em all.

Get the kids off the Soma and the Victory Gin.

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Ban ‘em

That joke has fallen off the port side

[GloriousVictoryForThePeople]

TikTok was also lashed, with a finding that it "engaged in a determined effort to obfuscate and avoid answering the most basic questions

What? Haven't these people heard of a poomoji autoresponder?

[Yorick Hunt]

Too right!

Ban everything that isn't controlled by Uncle Rupert or Creepy Joe!

After all, the great unwashed can't be trusted to think.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo Australia!

There's also a call for social media to "maintain a public library of advertisements on their platform."

Maybe soon online media companies are held accountable for serving scam ads. No, you cannot point to your automatic filtering as an excuse. In comparison TV ads serve orders of magnitude less scam and fraud. What is worse, those ads are targeting vulnerable groups to rob them from their life savings.*

Wasn't Australia the first to introduce uniform packaging for cigarettes? I remember too well how tobacco industry was pushing heavily against those measures.

Let's put (asocial) media companies to where they belong - advertisement business. Likely much less profitable, but properly supervised.

* The Billion Dollar Scam documentary by BBC: www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6JXZ3GzSCQ

[Version 1.0]

Re: Bravo Australia!

I would love to hear Kevin Bloody Wilson writing a new song about social media ... maybe just rewrite "This One's Just for You"

[Anonymous Coward]

Don’t ban them because they’re Chinese

It just smacks of xenophobia and bigotry ( but if that’s what you want to achieve then way to go)

Ban them because they are not compliant with local laws.

Ban them because you cannot trust their data management policies

But above all ban all the others as well that fail to meet the same criteria.

And the world will be a better place,

[schultzter]

Re: Don’t ban them because they’re Chinese

This!

Way too often free & democratic countries craft laws that ultimately single-out one company because only it "fits the criteria" so stop the theatrics and pass laws that apply equally!

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Don’t ban them because they’re Chinese

Perhaps you should reading the article before posting. The law *would* apply to all companies.

[Mayday]

Nah

I think everyone should just blindly sign up to and agree to all the terms, conditions and privacy policies without actually reading them and then wonder why they have been hacked or been a scam victim later.

[Ken Hagan]

Pretty obvious.

Can't operate in our country unless you obey our laws. Prove you are willing to comply by exposing yourself legally with a point of presence within our borders.

One wonders why this isn't the SOP for governments trying to protect their populations from predatory multi-nationals.

Would probably solve a few tax-related problems, too.

[WhyDoYouNeedThis]

Double standard

This is not about privacy for the individual or bad advertising. This is about control of the narrative.

National Security Issue = They are afraid of the influence TikTok and China has over more 'controlled' media sources. They are letting American companies operate because Australia wants to be to be friends with them, but not China.

We can't have an informed population can we?

Instead of burning books, how about educating the population!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Double standard

It is about asymmetry of information flow, until China removes its Great Firewall and allows Western online platforms to the country.

So, for now, ban all Chinese social media in the West.