Man, first the Stokes Stoush, now the facebook right hook. Twiggys making enemies with all the big media companies.
I haven’t read why the public prosecutor isn’t pursuing this. I’m sure it’ll be some reasonable reason due to some legislation the prosecutors can’t get around. Or something to that effect.
But this case seems emblimatic of the corporate geared legislative structure the five-eyes countries citizens have had foisted upon them. Yet again an obviously in the wrong company is walking away laughing as their pockets jingle, while the damage caused by their products to third parties goes largely unrestrained. Do we really want to carry on down this path?
For context this morning i’ve also been listening to Ralph Nader, so thats where my minds at right now.
Link to the episode, if people want to listen: https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/ralph-naders-capitalism
Probably dropped the suit because that’s obviously bullshit.
The fact is Meta has human review teams that check millions of posts every day and a large number of those are removed. You can certainly argue over wether or not they’re deleting the right posts, but the idea that they “refuse to address fraudulent content” is honestly ridiculous.
The second issue is Forest is campaigning for law reforms around this issue. The courts want nothing to do with that. They interpret existing laws and have zero involvement in writing new ones.
This whole thing looks like a massive waste of the court’s time. Which also, by the way, is a waste of tax payer money.
I don’t know about it being ridiculous. At best, Meta can argue they are doing the bare minimum for the size and importance of the platform. And that I agree is because of these review teams and reporting processes.
So the legal action is part of a wider action. If theres a wrong done then, part of a wider program or not, Forest has every right to take action.
The real issue I suspect is a commentary on the inaccessibility of the courts to the average person vis-a-vis someone like Forest. I agree, but silver lining. He can pay a legal team to research and deliver the points of the case to a degree that is out of reach for an average person. And, if successful, or if not but a point is partially agreed, this adds to the body of case law surrounding the subject that other lawyers can pick up and run with for their clients cases.
Imagine a trickle-down theory, but it actually works (unlike others), the benefits accumulate over decades long periods. As i say silver lining only.
You might be thinking of the French legal system which i believe is codified.
Australia’s, like the UK’s, still has common law (read judge-made law). Where legislation is silent a judge may decide a case by using a number of tools available to them to interpret the law, like the Golden rule. They may also rely on Torts. And i’m sure theres plenty of other examples where judges may ‘make’ the law.
You can argue that there is so much legislation now that common law is seldom going to be relied upon. This is due to case/common law becoming settled and eventually legislated. Legislation then over-rides common law, but the ability is still technically there.
I didn’t look into the case much, but from the top of my head, an example might be that migration high court decision not long ago, which changed the law and caught the federal government by surprise.