With the end of year rapidly approaching, there’s been a flurry of activity in the media sphere. Some of this stems from parliamentary inquiries and government proposals, while there's also been plenty of attention on internal cultural problems in media organisations.
On 9 October, over 100 Australian and international academics released an open letter calling for further consideration of the government’s proposed social media age limit. It argues that bans affect rights to access and participation and are likely to remove the incentive for platforms to protect rights and make their platforms safer for users.
The proposed ban runs counter to the regulatory approach being taken in related legislation including, most strangely, the Online Safety Act. One of the questions asked in the issues paper to the ongoing review of the OSA was whether the act should impose a duty of care on platforms. It noted the finding of the 2022 House Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety that a statutory duty of care model has ‘significant strengths, and flips the onus of responsibility to provide and ensure user safety back onto social media platforms.’ In our submission to the review, we argued in favour of a duty of care; and Sacha and I have also suggested that such a duty could encompass the setting of a minimum age. Unlike the government’s blanket ban, however, this would enable platforms to set a limit – based on a robust and publicly available risk assessment – that reflects the nature of the platform.
Whatever the details, the issue requires careful and nuanced regulation. The government’s bullish approach unfortunately responds to a moral panic pushed more by pundits than experts – a point made by QUT researcher Axel Bruns, reporting with some concern on the NSW and SA governments’ recent joint social media summit.
Meanwhile, the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society has released an interim report that does not respond at all to the issue of child safety on social media, though this will be addressed in the final report. The interim report mostly tackles the increasingly pressing problem of media sustainability, recommending that the government explore alternative revenue mechanisms to supplement the News Media Bargaining Code, such as a digital platform levy. It also recommends a mechanism to guide the ‘fair and transparent distribution of revenue’ – an issue we examined in our submission on the bargaining code in 2022. It does provide some broader recommendations, including funding for media literacy and the creation of a Digital Affairs Ministry, which would have ‘overarching responsibility for the coordination of regulation to address the challenges and risks presented by digital platforms.’
We agree at least that a more-holistic approach to digital platform regulation is needed. A good place to start would be to take a closer look at the accountability mechanisms in the EU’s Digital Services Act. Indeed, the interim report also recommends this, approving of its requirements for ‘transparency around recommender systems, as well as mandatory access to platform data and algorithms to facilitate research.’ We made similar arguments in our submission and recent parliamentary appearance on the misinformation bill, which I discuss further below.
Also this week, Tamara examines the lashing Nine received in an independent review of its culture, with reports of harassment, bullying and discrimination, and Sacha considers the ethics of privacy after Grace Tame challenged paparazzi for intruding on her in public. Finally, Alexia announces a new episode in CMT’s Double Take podcast.
Michael Davis, CMT Research Fellow