There’s been a particularly horrific video doing the rounds on TikTok. But while schools and parents have been warned to keep vigilant, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has demanded TikTok remove the video, there’s very little the government can actually do to get rid of it, despite new laws about restricting violent content online passed in the wake of the Christchurch shooting last year.
That’s because, according to a spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner, the video, which depicts a suicide, does not fit within the law's definition of violent and abhorrent material.
It’s another reminder that both regulators and tech companies are, for different reasons, utterly useless at cleaning up the internet.
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