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A federal Labor MP has called for stronger powers for the e-safety commissioner in moving evidence at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. The inquiry, which is sitting in Sydney, heard social media companies have been "grossly inadequate" in responding to online posts targeting witnesses who've appeared before the commission.

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00:01A fiery attack a world away from the Middle East.
00:05Jewish MP Josh Byrne's Melbourne office was violently ransacked in June 2024, but he told
00:13the commission it was online hate that struck a chord.
00:17It's like being stabbed twice, you know, once for the anti-Semitism and once being blamed
00:20for being stabbed in the first place.
00:22The federal Labor member described social media platforms as arenas of hate, telling
00:28the inquiry, his partner, politician Georgie Purcell, shouldered the abuse.
00:33Because she's a woman in politics, she also gets an added layer of misogyny and often
00:36violent sexualised language.
00:38In the wake of the Bondi terror attack, the government rushed hate speech reforms through
00:43Parliament, but a vilification clause didn't pass the bar.
00:47The eSafety Commissioner currently doesn't have the power to order the removal of hate
00:52posts targeting the Jewish community.
00:55We can do more to regulate more to impose standards on online media.
01:02One of the key challenges for the eSafety Commission is cracking down on social media giants based
01:07overseas.
01:08Meta, LinkedIn, Google and TikTok will front the inquiry, but the commission says others,
01:14including X, won't cooperate.
01:17Witnesses at the commission have also faced backlash.
01:20The Door Foundation collated 275 offensive posts.
01:26Only five have been removed by Facebook, 20 have been scrubbed from X.
01:31Explicit calls for violence against witnesses and Jewish people generally, including calls
01:37to kill Jews and bring back the gas chambers.
01:40Archaic hatred taking on a new form.
01:43The Door Foundation
01:44The Door Foundation
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