The Australian government is taking the fight to tech giants, promising to hold them accountable if Australians suffer harm as a result of their platforms.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has said that the government would legislate a “Digital Duty of Care” that will place the onus on digital platforms to proactively keep Australians safe and prevent online harms.

That piece of legislation would be in addition to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promising to table separate legislation this month that will set 16 as the minimum age for access to social media.

Rowland added that the Digital Duty of Care will put the “legal responsibility” for keeping Australians safe on tech companies. She added that it would also future-proof Online Safety Act 2021.

“The duty of care will put the onus on industry to prevent online harms at a systemic level, instead of individuals having to ‘enter at their own risk’,” said Rowland.

Kids social media (Image: Sourced from Unsplash)

 

Rowland noted that legislating a duty of care will mean services can’t ‘set and forget’. Instead, their obligations will mean they need to continually identify and mitigate potential risks.

Real-world examples of how this could play out means that potentially Facebook could be taken to court for breaching its duty of care to users if someone livestreams a mass shooting, or X could be taken to court too if it does not take reasonable steps to prevent harm when violent videos are shared.

Rowland said the Online Safety Act had been used to play whack-a-mole with illegal content on “a case-by-case basis” and “does not, in a fundamental sense, incentivise the design of a safer, healthier, digital platforms ecosystem”, according to the Australian Financial Review.

“Where platforms seriously and systemically breach their duty of care we will ensure the regulator can draw on strong penalty arrangements,” she added.

The changes to the Online Safety Act were recommended by an independent review by Delia Rickard, a former deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

“What’s required is a shift away from reacting to harms by relying on content regulation alone, and moving towards systems-based prevention, accompanied by a broadening of our perspective of what online harms are.”

Social Media (Image: Sourced from Unsplash)

 

Rowland argues that the Digital Duty of Care is not something novel or a piece of legislation that tech companies haven’t had to comply with elsewhere. She points out that the proposed legislation is aligned with United Kingdom and European Union approaches where digital platforms will be required to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms on their platforms and services.

Digital platforms have previously argued that they already take steps to comply with what is being proposed by the legislation. TikTok claims that it removed 1.5 million videos in Australia between January and March this year, and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, took down tens of millions last year.

In September, YouTube said that it had adjusted its algorithm to restrict content showing non-violent aggression and idealised physical appearances from being promoted to teenagers. These restricted categories include content that compares physical features and idealises some types over others, idealises specific fitness levels or body weights, or displays social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation.

In Australia, a survey by mental health service ReachOut this year found that social media is the number one issue of concern among parents and carers of children, with 59 per cent saying they were concerned about their child’s use of social media and 55 per cent saying social media had a significant impact on their child’s well-being.