AUSTRALIAN Communications Minister Anika Wells is working to form a worldwide coalition of nations to press tech giants such as Meta Platforms, Inc. to reduce online harm, potentially opening a new front in a widening regulatory battle against the industry.
Ms. Wells told Bloomberg News that such an alliance could adopt a template Australia is hoping to establish to compel the world’s biggest companies to protect children, who are being exposed to an expanding array of online harms from sex and violence to predators and deepfakes.
The Australian government last week proposed sweeping legislation that would push digital service providers — everything from social media platforms to AI chatbots — to bake in safety measures into their products by design.
In an interview in Sydney, Ms. Wells said she wants to leverage the new legislation to establish with other countries a suite of basic online safety standards, particularly for children. She has held discussions with counterparts in Malaysia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, the UK and others. Talks with more countries are lined up in coming weeks, Ms. Wells said.
“These are the most resourced, powerful companies in the world,” said the 41-year-old, who has three young children. “It’s going to take a coalition of lawmakers working together across the globe to take them on.”
Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, introduced almost one year ago, spawned a wave of similar restrictions and plans for minimum-age laws in dozens of countries from South America and Europe to the Middle East and Asia.
If Australia’s new legislation cascades overseas in a similar fashion, it would pose fresh risk for platforms including Facebook and Instagram — both owned by Meta — Snap, Inc. and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok as unease grows about their harmful effects on children. The plan has already drawn a rebuke from the Trump administration, which said Australia’s latest restrictive regulatory baseline on US technology companies risks spreading overseas.
The bill, which is called the Digital Duty of Care, would also allow social media users to switch off the algorithms that recommend content, undermining a central pillar of the platforms’ business model.
The legislation “will no doubt be very, very closely looked at in other countries,” said Michael Swinson, a Melbourne-based partner at law firm Mallesons who specializes in technology. “It’s clearly a very significant policy objective of this government to seek to regulate Big Tech.”
But bending Big Tech to Australia’s will has already proved difficult. Ms. Wells said in the interview she expects legal action to proceed against Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Alphabet, Inc.’s YouTube for alleged non-compliance with the social media ban for under 16s.
Australia’s fresh legislative crackdown reaches beyond social media restrictions.
The all-encompassing duty of care will require digital services including online games and apps to shield under-18s from abuse, bullying and pornography, as well as content that promotes eating disorders and hostility to women. Online service providers would have to carry out annual assessments to identify and reduce foreseeable risks to users.
“We expect food manufacturers to test their food before they sell it to Australians,” Ms. Wells said. “We expect toy manufacturers to check the choking hazards before they put their toys on the shelves.”
“Those same principles underpin the digital duty of care,” she said. Ms. Wells wants the legislation to pass parliament by the end of this year. The law would take effect 12 months later.
The penalty for breaches would be as much as A$109.2 million ($76.2 million), with the eSafety Commissioner, Australia’s online regulator, responsible for enforcement.
Still, the potential penalties could yet balloon: Ms. Wells said she’ll consider requests from the Australian Greens party to instead make fines a proportion of an entity’s global revenue, and to broaden the bill to allow individuals who’ve been harmed online to sue technology companies for compensation.
In August, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion in landmark settlements to resolve social media claims from US states. Parts of the deal required the company to put new guardrails on its platforms, including restricting scrolling time for youths.
According to Ms. Wells, a better outcome would be a set of globally agreed online safety standards, rather than negotiated settlements in specific jurisdictions. Either way, Ms. Wells acknowledges that what parents regard as progress in this area is typically hard won.
“We are fighting a communications war as well as an enforcement battle,” Ms. Wells said. — Bloomberg