X kicked from disinformation code for "serious breach"

X's, formerly Twitter's, status as a signatory to voluntary industry codes for suppressing false information has been revoked after the social media operator closed channels for the public to report misinformation and disinformation during the Voice to Parliament referendum. 

Technology monopolies’ critic Reset Australia filed a complaint to the industry association that oversees the code in October.

The Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) said in its decision upholding the complaint yesterday that its finding related only to X’s failure to enable users to report misleading information and “not on any content that might have been seen as misinformation or disinformation.

“[X] has, without reasonable excuse, failed to provide a mechanism to the public to make reports of breaches of its policies for an extended period," DIGI found.

 X neither made submissions nor attended meetings during DIGI’s investigation of the complaint. 

The voluntary code includes commitments to disrupt advertising and monetisation incentives for disinformation, improve public awareness of the sources of political advertising and to releasing annual transparency reports on measures taken against the content.

The remaining signatories of the opt-in scheme [pdf] include Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Redbubble.

Critics of the industry codes, including Reset and the Human Rights Law Centre, have said the voluntary scheme has failed to influence the sector to implement or enforce sufficient policies for suppressing false information; the government plans to legislate a mandatory scheme next year. 

The draft bill released in March would give the Australian Communications and Media Authority the power to register its own company-specific codes and industry-wide standards if it finds the existing voluntary codes fail to incentivise the signatories to improve their policies and enforcement practices. 

Code breaches would carry fines of $2.75 million or two percent of global turnover (whichever is greater) and standard breaches would carry fines of $6.8 million or five percent of global turnover if it’s greater. 

Criminal penalties could also be enforced in response to the creation of records or the provision of information to ACMA when the information provider or recorder maker knows it is false.

“ACMA would work with industry to ensure continuous improvement to the voluntary code which is overseen by industry", communications minister Michelle Rowland said when releasing the draft bill.

"However, should those efforts prove inadequate, ACMA would have the option to use the graduated set of reserve powers to ask industry to make a new, registrable code, or if necessary, ACMA could make a standard.”