Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Anika Wells have fronted the media today to outline details of the Australian government’s proposed digital duty of care bill.
Albanese said the new laws would call upon social platforms to protect users, particularly children, "from harmful content, including content that promotes eating disorders, misogynistic content, pornography, and content that glorifies crime".
He added that the laws would “require social media platforms to provide user empowerment tools that give people over the age of 16 genuine and enduring choice about what they see in their feeds”.
“We’ll provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps, all websites, and streamline the child’s cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse schemes, and will require digital platforms to document the measures taken to address harm to Australian users, and ensure measures remain effective over time,” Albanese said.
“This is sensible, pragmatic, practical reform. It gives users choice, and it will hold the big tech companies responsible for inaction.”
Wells added that the proposed legislation represents a “global reckoning coming for big tech,” with Albanese noting that companies in breach of the legislation could face penalties of up to $100 million.
“Tech companies have been running real-time, unregulated product testing on Australians, and their platforms and tools have infiltrated our daily lives in ways that we could never have imagined,” Wells said.
Addressing concerns that the law could be used to censor political commentary, particularly that critical of the government, Albanese said he could rule that out “emphatically”.
“It’s not about censorship – it’s about giving people control themselves over what they see,” Albanese said.
“This is about basic safety standards online for online services and about the onus being on big tech to identify risks on their platform and to mitigate against those risks.”
When questioned regarding the specifics of the kind of content targeted by the legislation, Wells outlined several specific examples.
"There are six of those, which is content around the promotion of eating disorders. So, like I said, a chatbot giving a teenage girl advice about how to exist on 600 calories a day. Misogynistic content that promotes hostile attitudes towards women, so that might be a particular platform circulating content that women and women or girls are equivalent to beasts or animals. Pornography, content that glorifies crime or dangerous stunts; there are people at the moment who steal cars and circulate that footage online," Wells said.
"And then content that causes serious distress, and that includes abuse and cyberbullying, so that is like a chatbot telling a teenager how to self-harm.".
Speaking earlier in the day, Independent MP Allegra Spender said that people “absolutely should be able” to critique the government of the day, but that some political commentary was indeed problematic.
“There are certainly situations where people are deliberately lying in political advertising and there’s absolutely no recourse, particularly during an election – I hate the scare campaigns,” Spender said.
“It’s not up to me as a politician to decide; this is where the AEC or others could have a good role in terms of making sure that people don’t have lies in political advertising, because I think that is misleading and that is problematic.”
Professor Rashina Hoda, Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity, Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, said earlier that proposed opt-in/opt-out clauses may not be enough to protect Australians from harmful content, however.
“For example, users may not even know they are in an echo chamber and therefore may not be able to help themselves. This could be even more challenging for vulnerable groups, including young people, the elderly and users with mental health conditions,” Professor Hoda said.
“Although it comes with its own challenges, such as the loss of personalised content, an opt-in option would provide a stronger control setting for users.
“Improving digital safety in social media contexts such as Instagram and Facebook is a good next step. But if the new amendments do not already include safeguards against harms increasingly being caused by modern generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, these should also be seriously considered.”
Dr Caitlin McGrane, of RMIT's School of Media and Communication, said that the discussion around the proposed duty of care legislation should include the voices of those most often at risk in online spaces.
"While this proposed legislative change is significant, it should be reinforced with adequate regulatory mechanisms and transparency requirements," Dr McGrane said.
"Women and gender diverse people who have experienced some of the most significant consequences of online harms should be at the centre of the government’s decision-making on this issue."
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