Report from the Digital Watch
In Brief – Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 has been introduced in the House of Representatives by the Albanese Government. The bill proposes requiring digital services to maintain a safe environment, protecting Australians from seriously harmful material and minors from content and conduct harmful to them. The bill requires online platforms to manage their services’ design features effectively and supply user-empowerment tools specified by the Communications Minister to allow their users to control how various features operate, in particular their content “feeds”. The bill’s Explanatory Memorandum cites research claims that so-called chronological feeds are less polarizing and inciting than engagement-driven social media recommendation systems. Prime Minister Albanese has dubbed this the “My Feed, My Way” initiative and made it a central feature of the legislation.
Context – Opposition critics responded to the legislative proposal by again raising censorship concerns in giving the government and eSafety Commissioner new loosely defined powers to determine what constitutes “serious harm”, a criticism that harkens back to attacks on the Albanese Government’s aborted 2024 effort to enact legislation requiring social media platforms to combat disinformation and misinformation identified by regulators. Unsurprisingly, the Trump Administration has expressed opposition to new regulatory authority aimed at requiring digital platforms, many based in the US, to police speech that regulators determine to be dangerous or offensive, a position that parallels their objections to the Digital Services Act in the EU and the Online Safety Act in the UK. The Green Party, on the other hand, expressed willingness to back the measure if a private right action allowing consumer lawsuits was added. Internationally, any Australian effort to regulate social media now garners added attention because of their then-novel 16-year-old age limit for social media. A host of governments have discussed following suit despite the impacts in Australia being questionable at best.