Introduction by Croakey: Readers with an interest in the digital determinants of health – and isn’t that everyone these days?! – have until 22 September to provide feedback on the Federal Government’s plans to implement a Digital Duty of Care.
The Prime Minister said these new laws would put the onus on digital service providers to provide a safe online environment, setting minimum standards for the features and tools they use.
The duty would apply to a range of online services, including social media services, internet search engines, app distribution services, hosting services, and AI content and generation services.
The ‘My Feed, My Way’ initiative gives users the option of opting in or out of having personalised algorithms influence their social media feeds.
Law firm Landers & Rogers has summarised key elements of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026:
- introduce a statutory digital duty of care for online service providers
- expand the powers of the eSafety Commissioner
- impose new transparency and reporting obligations
- establish data access arrangements for approved researchers
- introduce additional safeguards aimed at protecting children online.
The firm says the Bill “reflects a broader trend, both in Australia and internationally, towards increased accountability for digital platforms”.
The Government is now seeking feedback on the draft laws from “digital platforms, industry bodies, civil society organisations and advocates”, with legislation to be introduced to Parliament this year.
While the health sector is not explicitly mentioned as an important stakeholder for providing feedback, two researchers – Professor Kathryn Backholer and Dr Raffaele F Ciriello – comment below on some of the public health issues at stake.
Also see their recent Croakey article, Artificial intelligence is a determinant of population health. Australia’s policy is not keeping up.
Beneath their comments, Professor Lisa M Given from RMIT University gives an overview of the national and global context, and cautions that the reforms face “a long road” given the Coalition’s opposition to the Bill, which it describes as an attack of free speech.
Good step, more needed
Kathryn Backholer writes:
It’s a big step in the right direction. Australia is now among the countries taking strong action to hold Big Tech to account, so we need to keep moving forward carefully and evaluate what works.
But I agree with Raff (see comments below) that it could go further. For adolescents, I would much rather see personalised, algorithmically curated feeds be opt-in rather than something young people have to actively switch off.
From a public health perspective, the safer environment should be the default, rather than placing the burden on young people to protect themselves from systems often designed to maximise engagement.
I’d also like to see the Digital Duty of Care focus not only on harmful content, but on the commercial systems that shape young people’s online experiences, including profiling, targeted advertising and exposure to harmful commercial marketing.
As we move forward, we also need to make sure these reforms are monitored, enforced, reviewed and independently evaluated to ensure the objective of keeping young people safe online remains front and centre.
In terms of censoring the internet – I think the more important question is, why have we allowed Big Tech to engineer, profile and monetise children’s online experiences with so little accountability?!!
If we could go back 20 years or so and had the opportunity to create an online environment for our children from scratch, I think there would be very few who would design the one we have today.
• Professor Kathryn Backholer is Professor of Public Health Policy at Deakin University and Co-Director of the Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition. Her research examines the commercial determinants of health, digital environments, and policy approaches to improve population health and equity. She is Vice President (Policy) of the Public Health Association of Australia.
Put public interest first
Raffaele F Ciriello writes:
From a public health perspective, the safer option should be the default. If personalised recommendation systems recurrently expose young people to foreseeable harms, the burden should not fall on them to find the off switch.
A non-profiled feed should be the default, with personalised algorithmic curation something users actively choose to opt in.
‘My Feed, My Way’ is therefore a useful step, but only one instrument within a broader Digital Duty of Care, alongside limits on harmful profiling and commercial targeting, effective enforcement, independent scrutiny, and researcher access.
The Duty of Care itself should also be seen as one part of a wider public interest approach to digital infrastructure.
Large digital platforms increasingly shape the information environments in which population health is conditioned. That makes transparency, independent oversight and enforceable public-interest obligations essential.
The immediate warning from the Trump administration to the Australian Government illustrates the tension: Australian regulation should be judged by whether it protects the public interest, not by whether it leaves the business models of US technology firms unfettered.
Australia alone has limited bargaining power against Big Tech but could be in a better position by joining allied middle powers with similar regulatory approaches.
I also think the free-speech objection has the issue exactly backwards. Algorithmic feeds are not neutral conduits for speech. They continuously decide what receives visibility and what disappears, largely according to engagement and commercial objectives.
Giving Australians a meaningful choice to step outside that ranking system is not censorship. It expands their agency over what and whom they choose to hear.
The alternative is effectively to leave major technology companies as the largely unaccountable arbiters of whose speech gets amplified or sidelined.
Dr Raffaele F Ciriello is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney Business School. His research examines compassionate digital innovation, AI companions, and the governance of emerging technologies for the common good. He is a voluntary member of the eSafety Commissioner’s Parent Advisory Group.
Forcing tech platforms to look after users
Lisa M Given writes:
On 8 September, the Federal Government introduced draft Digital Duty of Care legislation, designed to protect Australians from online harms.
The legislation was first planned – but shelved – in 2024. At the time, the Government heralded it as “a shift away from reacting to harms by relying on content regulation alone, and moving towards systems-based prevention”.
After a two-year wait, this bill – if passed – could finally fulfil that goal.
A digital duty of care puts the onus on digital service providers – such as social media platforms, generative artificial intelligence (AI) services, messaging apps, websites, and interactive online games – to create a safe online environment.
“Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day,” Minister for Communications Anika Wells said.
Under the draft legislation, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok must give users an option of whether they want their default feed to include personalised content recommended by an algorithm or only content from their friends and people they follow. This option will appear as a popup box for people when they use social media.
Wells acknowledged many people may choose to stick with the recommendation algorithm. But she said the value of this initiative is that it gives people a choice: “It’s empowering”.
Protection from illegal and harmful content
The draft bill also requires digital service providers to protect all users from seriously harmful material and conduct, including illegal content. This includes content relating to child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse, grooming, promoting or inciting sexual violence, supporting terrorism, and encouraging criminal offences, illicit drug use and abhorrent violent conduct.
In addition, digital service providers must also protect teenagers and children from addictive features and harmful content. This includes pornography and content that encourages disordered eating, hostile attitudes towards women and gender equality, dangerous stunts, and harassment or bullying.
Companies must also conduct regular risk assessments which identify “all reasonably foreseeable risks”, as well as the content and design features that give rise to those risks. They must make these assessments available to the eSafety Commissioner within 30 days, if requested.
The draft bill also empowers the commissioner to issue removal notices for “nudify” apps and websites, and streamline the child cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse schemes.
The legislation is similar to laws already in effect in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Since 2024, for example, the EU’s Digital Services Act has been used to investigate potentially addictive features of Meta’s platforms.
Just this past week, EU lawmakers have “demanded” that Meta be compelled to change the “addictive” design of its platforms in Europe.
Context
This approach was first recommended by a 2024 review of the Online Safety Act.
The Government put the proposed digital duty of care legislation on hold while it pursued implementation of social media age restrictions. In December 2025 the legislation was revived, with an open consultation period.
The Government then released an issues paper on the development of a duty of care framework in May 2026.
That plan highlighted five key principles that informed the design of the current legislation:
- improving and promoting online safety for Australians
- providing clarity for regulated entities and minimising regulatory complexity
- building on the current online safety protections for Australians
- improving accountability and transparency
- building in sufficient flexibility to accommodate technological change.
Will it work?
One key question is how the legislation will be enforced.
Companies who breach their digital duty of care would face fines of nearly A$110 million. The eSafety Commissioner would be able to investigate technology companies’ compliance.
Notably, the draft bill also gives “approved” researchers, such as those from an Australian university, access to digital service providers’ data for the purposes of online safety–related research.
Approved researchers could also create a false online identity (known as a “sock puppet”) to test the safety of online services.
If enacted, one key question is whether this new legislation – if successful – could effectively replace Australia’s social media age restrictions by addressing harmful content and design features.
Those restrictions were intended to keep children safe from harm on social media platforms. But current research shows more than 85 percent of children were still using the platforms three months after the law came into effect.
The Government’s own data echoes these findings. This raises concerns about the effectiveness of age-based restrictions to prevent harm.
Long road ahead
The Government is now seeking feedback on the draft bill and expects to introduce it to parliament this year. But the passage of the bill isn’t guaranteed. The Opposition Leader, Angus Taylor, says it is an attempt to “censor” the internet.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejects this claim, saying “it’s about giving people control themselves over what they see”.
Regardless, the introduction of this legislation is an important and necessary step to ensure safety by design, and safe use, for Australian consumers.
Technologies evolve quickly, raising known and potential future harms for people of all ages. Technology companies must be required – by law – to have a duty of care for all users. This is the only way to ensure we can benefit from online services while being protected from the harms they can present.
Author details
Lisa M Given is Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University. Her work is interdisciplinary and covers a range of topics including students’ experiences, consumer behaviour, health-related information needs, collaborative work, translation of research results into practice, misinformation, and many other topics where people use technologies to access the information they need to solve daily problems. Her article above was first published at The Conversation.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on digital platforms and health
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