The government’s draft bill for a new approach to online safety is currently up for public discussion, and various people are getting hot under the collar about it, particularly those whose political and business model relies on Australians being as angry as possible.
Far be it from me to suggest there are a shortage of things to be angry about, but the idea of a digital duty of care is not revolutionary. Workplaces and physical products need to be safe to be legal. Why not nudge the online realm slightly in that direction, where there are clearly foreseeable (and planned) risks of harm?
With social media algorithms driving many people crazy, and into the arms of the most extreme and divisive content, the right to opt out of that without becoming a digital exile shouldn’t be controversial. The issue is that the draft bill doesn’t just cover the giant social media platforms, but will potentially also impact news sites, commentary platforms and smaller services, with potential fines of around $110 million for breaching the digital duty of care, and the federal eSafety Commissioner gaining powerful new enforcement powers.
The government says its bill is designed to target already illegal things like child sexual abuse, the promotion of sexual violence, terrorism and illicit drugs. Building on their semi-successful under 16 social media ban, they claim the new law will also address teen-specific harms, such as content promoting disordered eating and material ‘encouraging hostile attitudes against women’, dangerous stunts, harassment and cyberbullying.
Social media services would have to give users the right to opt out of a personalised algorithmic feed in favour of an old-fashioned chronological service based on friends.
With an abbreviated window for public response (one week remains), Angus Taylor’s Coalition says the draft bill hands the government ‘a blank cheque for political censorship’ and says it will oppose it. Other critics have noted that the draft bill has dropped explicit protections for minority and racial groups, although these were recommended by the government’s own review.
With One Nation currently fighting with itself over whether to take down a cartoon accusing Andrew Hastie of being a traitor, for obeying the law and reporting war crimes (so far it hasn’t), there’s no surprise that Pauline Hanson has attempted to frame the new bill as an attack on free speech.
Angertainment
I recently read GetUp! guru Ed Coper’s book Angertainment, which explains how the early hopes for the internet as a progressive force were dashed by the rise of ‘angertainment’ in the hands of far right political actors.
Coper points out that our brains are hardwired to respond to anger above all, which is why the social media algorithms are designed to amplify outrage. The resulting harm risks eroding social cohesion to the point where societies collapse.
Will the new proposed laws help us avoid turning into the next USA or UK? Maybe.
The problem is that while some of the most illegal aspects of the online anger problem would be addressed, the monetisation and amplification of lawful anger, including polarisation and rage bait, isn’t a harm recognised by the bill, which means the outrage business model will be largely untouched, unless users decide en masse to switch off the algorithm (unlikely).
Forests and the INFM
Speaking of anger, the bitter fight over whether the protection of Australian forests should be tied to carbon credits has recently been dividing environmentalists against themselves, which was probably the whole idea, at the behest of Chris Minns and Anthony Albanese.
With the NSW premier belatedly deciding that the long-promised Great Koala National Park would only proceed if the trees saved were assessed in the form of carbon credits for big polluters, under so-called Improved Native Forest Management (INFM), the Greens split over whether to support Labor’s scheme or allow something even worse to be pushed through by the Nationals.
Ultimately the Greens faction led by Larissa Waters federally and Sue Higginson in NSW had the numbers to support Labor’s approach, while senators Nick McKim, Vanessa Bleyer and Jordon Steele-John crossed the floor in a show of defiance, supporting the position of former Greens leader Bob Brown.
Nick McKim captured the internal anger of his party when he said, ‘Labor is holding the koalas hostage… and threatening their extinction unless they can profit from their habitat.’
So will that habitat now be saved from loggers, or will Labor backflip again?
Whatever happens, the lasting anger on both sides of this debate is not going to dissipate easily. As Mark Twain supposedly said, ‘Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.’
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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