Advocates vent frustration at 'fractured' govt response to wrangling social media

"Only hard laws can achieve accountability in a digital platforms market," Reset Tech Australia executive director Alice Dawkins told a parliamentary inquiry hearing on Wednesday.

"Social media companies have some of the best lawyers and lobbyists in the world and have done a brilliant job at creating a state of exception from the ordinary reach of laws."

Peter Lewis, founder of Per Capita's Centre of the Public Square, told the joint select committee on social media and Australian society that ministerial and department responsibility for tech platforms was too fragmented.

He called for one senior minister to be given "overriding responsibility [to] protect platform accountability, or at least more coordinated internal process to look at these reforms as a package".

"The fractured custodianship of reform across the different ministries ... has been a barrier," he said.

"Regulation is not just a policy challenge. It's also a coordination challenge."

Mr Lewis said he was fed up with the slow progress on reform, five years after the ACCC Digital Platforms Inquiry.

"I've got to say it's incredibly frustrating to be presenting to yet another government inquiry dealing with the negative impacts of social media and the power of big tech," Mr Lewis said.

Most of the ACCC's 23 recommendations designed to "address the monopoly power of these businesses" had been left to gather dust, he said.

"Disinformation, copyright reform, digital literacy, support for public local and public interest journalism, and ombudsman for complaints against platform providers, data portability, the list goes on."

In the meantime, he said, harm from social media companies had escalated, questioning their ongoing role in public discourse.

"Policing big tech content inevitably embeds big tech as the host of our public square. Is this really the best we can offer?" he said.

"X [Twitter] is a cesspit, Meta's banning news, TikTok may or may not be a tool of state propaganda. Is the regulation of these companies sufficient to support a healthy democracy?"

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is in charge of online safety, combating disinformation and media regulation.

But the News Media Bargaining Code, which is supposed to regulate digital platforms' use of media content, falls under Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones' portfolio.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is responsible for the government's privacy reform consultation, which is considering whether social media users should have a right to turn off targeting.

Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic has responsibility for the broader technology sector, including artificial intelligence.

Mr Lewis said the government's response to the ACCC inquiry had been too focused on the News Media Bargaining Code - which was never supposed to be "a standalone measure".

Under the code, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta struck deals to pay media companies for their content.

Those deals have now expired, leading to hundreds of journalists being made redundant and newspapers closing.

Media companies have repeatedly called on the federal government to designate Meta under the code, which would enable it to start a legal process aimed at forcing Meta to pay for news.

Digital Rights Watch chair Elizabeth O'Shea told the hearing that "bold and comprehensive privacy reform" was needed to stop social media companies' "excessive data collection".

Targeted advertising using this data by "predatory industries, including gambling, alcohol, diet and junk food products" was enabling "the exploitation of vulnerability for profit", she said.

"Microtargeting makes online life dangerous for many Australians," Ms O'Shea said.

Australia's out-of-date privacy laws had enabled these business models to "proliferate online ... at significant expense to Australian society."

"Our information ecosystem is being polluted by content that is, at best, low quality and, at worst, deceptive and extremist - and that is because it is profitable," she said.

Ms Dawkins said the new laws must "switch the burden onto social media companies themselves for them to manage the many risks from their systems and be accountable by facing consequences for failure."

"We know from whistleblower testimony that these companies know intricately about the existence of these risks and evolving harms, yet also perfected the art of manufactured surprise and masterful deflection," she said.