Australia: Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill 2022 rejected in the Australian Parliament

On 11 April 2022, the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill 2022 lapsed due to the dissolution of the Australian Parliament. The Bill would have classified providers of social media services as “publishers”, and made them potentially liable for defamatory content published by third parties on their platforms. The Bill specified that in order to avoid liability the platforms needed to implement a complaints scheme, respond to requests from defamed users and have legal representation in Australia. In particular, the Bill aimed to provide users with the possibility to obtain the defamatory commenter's relevant contact details or country location data.