Scott Morrison's war on Facebook trolls - City of Melville case study
City of Melville Residents and Ratepayers Assoc Inc.
City of Melville Residents and Ratepayers Association Inc.
Scott Morrison’s push to change the laws to clean up Facebook is long overdue.
The City of Melville has been plagued by many vile Facebook “trolls” since the “Melville Community Chat” page was set-up and promoted by Mayor Russell Aubrey, some of his cabal Councillors and their many associates and supporters in the months before the 2017 Local Government elections.
The trolls have made many vile, threatening and defamatory posts against community groups and individuals that spoke out against Mayor Aubrey and the state of the affairs at the City of Melville; a City that is still the subject of a State Government Inquiry.
Many of the vile trolls use fake profiles, believed to be operated by a small group of Mayor Aubrey supporters; the “Melville Community Chat” page has fake profiles administering it.
A number of the Mayor Aubrey ‘cabal’ often interact with the trolls in one-sided conversations about issues they want to push on community. Whilst Facebook is a wonderful tool to promote such dialogue and free speech, the vile trolls regularly venture into vile, denigrating, defamatory, threatening and harassing comments, often based on outright lies or intended to mislead. We have not provided any of the vile examples here.
Facebook has failed to properly respond to complaints about the vile trolls. Facebook has previously refused to provide information to enable criminal and/or civil action to be taken against the perpetrators.
Recently our local Federal Member of Parliament, Mr Ben Morton, intervened and Facebook is now starting to take an interest.
Last week Facebook disabled two of the worst Mayor Aubrey ‘gang’ trolls - Roger Goldburg and Jon Atkins; both fake profiles that had been responsible for many, many vile posts against community groups, community leaders and a number of Labor Members of Parliament.
We hope the next Federal Government, whoever it is, quickly changes the laws to provide protections from the out of control media platforms and the vile trolls – real or fake.
More action to come.