Free TV Australia, the peak body for commercial broadcasters, says it is concerned that legitimate broadcast content could be banned by digital platforms under the proposed laws.
could prompt tech giants to restrict TV content on their platforms, as legal experts warn the laws could encourage over-censorship by companies wanting to avoid hefty fines.
A “significant and fundamental problem” of the proposed laws was scenarios such as an excerpt of a breakfast TV show being removed by Facebook after a determination by parent company Meta that it was excluded content, Free TV said. Eminent law professor Anne Twomey said the fact there was an exclusion for news content in the proposed legislation did not guarantee that news reports would not be removed by platforms trying to expunge misinformation.
Free TV called for a wholesale exclusion of all free-to-air content from the proposed laws. The Greens, who could be decisive in whether the laws pass the Senate, have signalled they will push in the other direction for the exemption for news content to be scrapped, citing News Corp as a cause for concern.