‘Rewarding conspiracy theorists?’: Labor MP’s broadside after Reddit’s $10bn move

A Labor MP has taken a swipe at Reddit, questioning why people would invest in a social media platform that she claims rewards “conspiracy theorists” and “violence”.

Victorian backbencher Michelle Ananda-Rajah made the comments in a speech to the House of Representatives on Thursday night as she called on the Opposition and crossbench to back

.

The bill, which is yet to be tabled, is being overhauled after attracting criticism last year. The draft proposal sought to curb the online spread of false and misleading information, but there was concern from some quarters that it could jeopardise free speech.

It’s expected to be introduced to parliament sometime this year.

Reddit launched on the New York Stock Exchange last week and its value soared to US$10 billion ($15.3 billion). Source: Getty / Spencer Platt

Reddit last week made its US stock market debut and soared to a $10 billion ($A15.3 billion) valuation — a result that Ananda-Rajah said “leaves me cold”.

“What is the market rewarding — conspiracy theorists, extremism, violence?” she said.

She also criticised Meta — the parent company of social networking site Facebook, which she said should have been “strangled” when it launched 20 years ago.

Ananda-Rajah said social media had created a “litany of social harms, from extremism, scams, and

” and that it had negatively impacted the mental health of children.

She said social media companies needed to be more transparent about their algorithms, improve their content moderation, and called for enhanced “aged verification mechanisms that keep kids out of adult content”.

Meta declined to comment, while a Reddit spokesperson pointed to its content policy — which states, among other things, that it will ban users who incite violence or promote hate based on identity or vulnerability — and its safety blog.

The spokesperson also pointed to a New York Times article, published last week, that labelled its content moderation a “success story”.

Australia’s online safety regulator

to Meta, Google, X, Telegram, WhatsApp (owned by Meta), and Reddit, ordering them to outline their strategies to stop the spread of harmful content by terrorists and violent extremists.

They have 49 days to comply with the legal notice or face the prospect of tens of millions of dollars in penalties.

“Unfortunately, it is a growing problem,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said last week. “And what we’re seeing is so many of these platforms are enabling themselves to be weaponised by violent extremists because attention and conflict sells.”

Meanwhile, the federal government is reviewing Australia’s online safety laws, with the final report set to be handed down in the second half of this year.

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