Federal Government pressure is at last being applied to social media platforms to do the kind of monitoring of what’s shown on their media business sites to everyday Australians. This follows TikTok’s role in carrying videos that showed browsers on their site how to defraud the Australian Tax Office.

In case you missed it, we learnt that a scam involving a more than a billion-dollar loss to the Australian Tax Office had been aided by TikTok by making available videos that showed people how pretend that they set up a business and were entitled to a rebate for expenses.

The government minister set to be the ‘adult in the room’ with these digital businesses (that aid and abet all manner of scam merchants and weirdos) is Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones.

I’ve been arguing for years that the lawbreaking aspects of these social media businesses needs to stop and only a gutsy politician can do that.

Most of these digital businesses (who like to think they are media operations and they are because they provide content and play ads like media concerns) break old laws that traditional media would have been hauled over the coals for.

This is exactly what Minister Jones argued.

“We wouldn’t let a newspaper selling advertising space for people to break the law; we wouldn’t let a radio station or a TV station do that, so we shouldn’t let social media platforms do that either.”

The Daily Telegraph says more than 100 people have been arrested over the scam, including a former Westpac bank manager and Rotary member who ‘converted’ to a Hell’s Angel!

For those wondering how many people were able to commit fraud on the ATO, Stephen Jones said the videos on TikTok exploited a “design feature” of the GST system to help start-up small businesses.

Under this provision of the Tax Act, the ATO must refund within 10 days any GST involved in setting up a business to help the new business with cashflow.

After securing an Australian Business Number, the TikTok-educated, future scam merchants would create fake expenses and GST payments.

The Tele says some claims topped $100,000!

Apart from Mr Jones telling us that there’ll be a “full court press” to make sure the thieves repay the ATO, he is putting the pressure on the likes of TikTok to improve the monitoring of what runs on their sites.

The expectation is that Artificial Intelligence software will assist in the improved vetting of what shows up on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and so on. But given how the ATO was scammed, a lot of work needs to be done.

But it can’t be just the social media platforms and Minister Jones playing policeman. I think we need the viewing public to be encouraged to “dob in a baddie”, like the way Crime Stoppers works.

Newspapers have feedback columns for readers and all media is supposed to be monitored and even disciplined by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which is responsible for the regulation of broadcasting, the Internet, radiocommunications and telecommunications.

This is what ACMA is supposed to do: “ACMA is an independent Commonwealth statutory authority, the mission of which is to ‘regulate communications and media to maximise the economic and social benefits of communications infrastructure, services and content for Australia’.”

Clearly, this body needs more money so it can become a more visible participant in the monitoring and exposing of bad eggs doing their worst on social media websites and other websites.

I like the idea of “dob in a baddie” as it could also help the likes of the ATO not get played off a break for such a long time that it now has to go looking for the lost billion dollars or so.

There also could be a financial incentive for the dobber, if they expose big problems on the Internet. I like the idea of “dobber of the year” or better still “community champion of the year”, so we can get away from the Aussie disdain for dobbing.

Of course, dobbing is OK when it exposes bad actions and bad people.

And obviously, this scam must have taught the ATO a lesson or two. Well, let’s hope so.