Thinktank warns Australian misinformation laws should not be based on voluntary industry code

Experts find ‘significant gaps between statement and practice’ of social media firms’ enforcement of standards

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The Australian government’s laws to force tech companies to act on misinformation should not be based on the current voluntary industry code as planned, because those standards are not being met, a technology thinktank has said.

“We were testing the efficacy of these systems,” the executive director of Reset Australia, Alice Dawkins, said. “And where there had been a commitment or a statement made in the code we tested the results against what platforms said that they did.