The Albanese government will today formally introduce its Digital Duty of Care legislation to require news websites and social media platforms to take down “seriously harmful material.”
In addition, according to Communications Minister Anika Wells, the legislation would allow the government’s eSafety commissioner to operate fake online accounts, often referred to as “bots” or “sock puppet” accounts, to conduct research.
In truth, this legislation is the most radical mass-censorship legislation any Western government has proposed in the internet era. Under the rubric of censoring vaguely defined “harmful material”, the government would be able to force internet companies, including news corporations, to take down online news coverage of major events like the Bondi massacre last year.
Moreover, the legislation would allow the government to operate fake accounts not just for research but also to “conduct … educational, promotional, and community awareness programs”. In other words, to spread government propaganda while pretending to be ordinary citizens.
The new legislation explicitly says the government will not have to follow the rules of the social media companies against the use of fake accounts.
I am not a free speech absolutist and believe there are limits to free speech. I support laws against the immediate incitement to violence, child exploitation, fraud and defamation. And I support the government’s use of fake accounts to investigate and prosecute fraud and child predators.
But the things the government says it needs new legislation for are already illegal, and it can already legally use fake accounts for investigating fraud and predators.
Earlier this week, Wells suggested the government needed new censorship powers to protect children. “I don’t think anybody’s free speech depends on an algorithm pushing eating disorder content to a 14-year-old,” she said. But Australia has enforced a ban on social media use for minors under 16 since last December.
Two staffers to a Labor Party member of parliament told me this week that the government needed the new legislation to censor things like the upcoming US government’s execution of terrorist Nidal Hasan. When I asked why they needed to censor that video, one said it was to prevent copycat killings. Copycat killings by governments? I asked. No, she said. Copycat killings like one of a backpacker – several decades ago.
But under that standard, I pointed out, the government could censor major news events like the Bondi terrorist attack. Well, that was news, they said. But didn’t they realise their bill would allow the government to censor news? I asked. They didn’t seem to know – or care. They said their boss would support the bill no matter what.
Anthony Albanese said at the United Nations that his proposed law “is not about giving government control, it is about giving people control”.
But users already have control over what they see online. Social media platforms suggest content based on who users follow and what they watch and read. The government has condemned this as addictive, but it need not be and is often helpful to users, offering related content that users may not see otherwise.
And on X, formerly Twitter, users can already choose to receive information from the people they follow and ignore the “For You” feed, which consists of posts the X algorithm chooses based on ones that users click on and share.
The Albanese government’s proposal to use unlimited fake accounts is particularly puzzling, given that in 2024 the government proposed cracking down on them.
At the time, the government proposed censorship legislation targeting “misinformation” and “disinformation”.
It specifically targeted any “bot network” that could mislead people about “the identity, purpose or origin of the person disseminating the content”.
Do Labor and Greens voters really believe a right-wing government in the future wouldn’t define hostile attitudes in a way that would be significantly more hostile to the attitudes of Labor and the Greens?
The left says its political rivals are fascist and even Hitlerian. Either it doesn’t believe what they’ve been saying, it doesn’t think fascism entails censorship, or, most troubling, it thinks they will remain in power forever.
So what exactly is going on? Why is the Albanese government demanding sweeping powers to censor even online news events, such as the Bondi massacre?
And why is it seeking to create an army of disinformation bots?
I put these questions to the eSafety commissioner and Digital Rights Watch, an NGO that supports the legislation, about the demand to operate an unlimited number of fake accounts.
An eSafety spokesman wouldn’t answer my questions and told me to ask Wells. A spokesman for Digital Rights Watch did not answer my question about the powers requested to use fake accounts to “conduct … educational, promotional, and community awareness programs”.
I emailed Wells and did not hear back before the end of the workday on Wednesday. It is perhaps no coincidence that at least two of the major supporters of the legislation, Digital Rights Watch and Chanel Contos’s Teach Us Consent, have received millions in government grants. And given that the government’s justifications for the bill keep shifting, it’s reasonable to conclude that it has ulterior motivations.
One of them was accidentally revealed by the Prime Minister himself when he told the United Nations last month: “Today we’re concentrating on the impact on children, the truth is this is having an impact on our entire society and how it functions with misinformation, disinformation.”
He added that there is “increased polarisation” and that Australians were “moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes”.
In other words, Albanese and his government are plainly worried that social media is driving Australians away from his own party. A September poll showed that more voters preferred the conservative One Nation party, which has criticised the government’s migration policies, over the Labor Party. Though Labor has recovered somewhat since then, it clearly feels under pressure.
Polling shows that Labor lost support after last year’s Bondi massacre. In July, the Institute of Public Affairs presciently warned that the government would use it “as an excuse for internet censorship and surveillance”. That warning has since proven prescient.
Ten days after his Labor Party suffered a surprise loss of Secret Harbour to a One Nation candidate, Albanese announced the duty of care. The Australians with the most to lose to the government’s censorship are One Nation voters, more than half of whom rank immigration as their top concern, far more than any other group.
But beneath these political and strategic motivations is a deeper intolerance towards different points of view. The left since 2010 went from demanding the cancellation of controversial speakers, to government censorship, to the celebration of the killing of Charlie Kirk for the things he said. This intolerance stems from the left’s dogmatic certainty that it is right and moral and its opponents wrong and immoral.
Western civilisation rests upon the idea that the truth emerges from dialogue and thus that free speech is the enabling foundation for democracy. The West’s first great martyr was Socrates, whom the government ordered to death for the things he said.
The Albanese government’s demand for censorship and the ability to wage informational warfare through the use of fake accounts is an attack on this Western tradition of free speech and democracy. I encourage the people of Australia to use their voices forcefully to oppose it.
