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PedroEglasias t1_jdu6uz3 wrote

Reply to comment by big-red-aus in Twitter loses bid to throw out complaint by Australian Muslim group over ‘hateful’ content | Twitter by ZealousidealClub4119

Seems like a scary precedent to say that all websites/apps and their users are subject to laws in every jurisdiction in which those websites are available publicly.

Would the executives at Twitter have to be afraid to fly into China cause users have posted Tweets about Xi looking like Winnie the Pooh? Should I be afraid to fly into China because I just made that comment?

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raizhassan t1_jdualog wrote

Scary precendent or something that literally happens all the time. Twitter executives don't have to worry about China because twitter is banned in China.

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PedroEglasias t1_jdub66b wrote

OK bad example, let's say users post jokes about the King of Thailand

Although technically even though it's banned China could still accuse them of propaganda to disparage a head of state

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big-red-aus t1_jdx9z3e wrote

Where jurisdictions end is a bit of a tricky question, that in many cases in terms of online content is a bit murky at the edges.

From the Australian context, all the cases have been against big multinationals that have local subsidiaries, actively engage users based on geography (i.e. trending in Australia), have servers in Australia and actively court both Australian users and advertisers. Twitter, pending details of how much it has cut back under Musk, hits pretty much all of these, so in this context it's not so much as the content just being available, but instead the company clearly operating in Australia.

On the other hand, the US has at times taken a pretty extreme view of where their jurisdiction extends to i.e. if your Australian based online shop ships 1 item to the US, you are under US law.

Publishing this internationally is a tricky business, and while online business got away with a couple of decades of just pretending that laws don't matter to them, the reality is that if you are going to operate in a country/jurisdiction, you need to follow their laws or risk legal consequences, especially if they then go put themselves in the jurisdiction in person.

If the executives are worried about this, as far as I'm aware most courts are happy to count basic region IP blocking as sufficient as making the effort to not be operating in country.

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