Over the years, the United Nations has seen all kinds of world leaders. But when he arrives in New York on Monday for the annual general assembly, Anthony Albanese will be looking for collaborators. Determined to rein in the power of social media giants harming the lives of children, the Australian prime minister believes only a concerted effort by countries around the world will be enough to force change.
Attending the UN leaders week in September last year, Albanese hosted a stylish event in a room overlooking the East River, talking up Australia’s world-leading moves to ban children under 16 from having social media accounts. That day, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the world was watching Australia. There to hear from families of children who had taken their own lives after online bullying, the leaders of Greece, Fiji, Tonga and Malta agreed it was time for change.
A year later, the ban is responsible for the closure of as many as 5m accounts in Australia. And, as countries as diverse as France, Brazil and Indonesia follow suit, Albanese is taking the next step. Earlier this month he announced plans to legislate a digital duty of care, and rules to allow social media users to opt out of the powerful algorithms splintering communities, overheating political debates and targeting vulnerable people.
Australia, a middle power and a long way from many of the world’s big diplomatic questions, is portraying itself as the leader in tackling big tech’s reach into all our lives. Albanese believes he is helping spur “a global movement” for change, using public pressure, big fines and diplomacy to correct harm playing out online, as well as in the real world. As he flies to the US, where one of his first stops will be at Apple’s California headquarters for talks with its chair and former chief executive, Tim Cook, Albanese will be buoyed up by polling showing two-thirds of voters (66%) support opt out requirements for algorithms.
A DemosAU poll this week found only 13% were opposed to the plan. The majority of respondents believed social media companies should be legally required to reduce foreseeable risks to users, even if it meant more restrictions on their business models. But the polling is set against a parallel, less positive conversation about AI and Australia’s datacentre boom, with growing disquiet among communities exposed to the country’s 160-odd datacentres and about how they will be powered.
To feed the AI that depend on those developments, Albanese appears open to negotiating trading Australian copyright protections in order to do business with the same companies he has taken to task over social media. In the digital safety space, Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Perth, says Australia has shown a level of leadership not always expected from a smaller country. Leaver points to the Netherlands, where a legal challenge found Meta was not compliant with the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
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