Social media and digital services have become central to our daily lives.

From sharing experiences with friends and family, to shopping, ordering meals, learning new skills, connecting with likeminded communities and engaging in political discourse.

Increasingly, we’re living and working in online spaces that remain remarkably unregulated.

This month the Albanese government published a draft of its long-awaited Digital Duty of Care legislation. I’ve worked with experts, industry, civil society and my local community over many months to determine the requirements of a strong Digital Duty of Care.

Here’s my initial response to the government’s exposure draft.

The good

Australians recognise that our online spaces – particularly social media – are harmful and addictive.

When asked about social media’s impact on their friends and family, the 1200 respondents to my community survey were five times more likely to say that its impact was negative than positive.

More than 90 per cent believed that social media companies should take more responsibility to address the long-term harms they cause.

The Digital Duty of Care places a responsibility on online services to proactively identify and limit the harms that they cause. This is great news – and is much needed.

To comply with this duty, online services like social media companies, search engines, app stores and websites will have to protect people from harm.

Specifically, they will have to protect adults from seriously harmful material like content that promotes child sexual abuse, extreme violence, suicide and terrorism.

For children, stronger protections are applied to cover content such as pornography, misogyny, abuse and the promotion of eating disorders. In practice, this means that online services will need to develop more effective approaches for screening and filtering out harmful content.

This draft legislation goes beyond content, tackling algorithms and other design features for the first time.

Social media companies spend billions of dollars keeping users engaged online through algorithms that promote outrage, and addictive design features like endless scroll.

I am very pleased the legislation requires online services to consider and mitigate harm caused to children by design features. For adults, online services will be required to give individuals choice about their algorithms, which is a start.

The draft legislation also makes important transparency reforms. The eSafety Commissioner will have the ability to request reports about how online services are complying with the duty.

Researchers will be able to access data so we can continue to learn how platforms work and hold them to account.

The bad

There are three key areas I think the government must improve to strengthen the Digital Duty of Care.

First, the protections and choice empowerment for adults should be expanded.

As currently drafted, the online experience for adults will not change very much because “seriously harmful” material is already banned under industry standards and codes.

Online services should take responsibility for harms caused by design features, as they will have to do for children. Beyond algorithms, this includes addictive design, content monetisation, advertising systems and online scams.

Second, the penalties should be increased. Under this proposal, online services in breach would face fines up to $100 million. This is much less than other countries.

The EU and Britain have fines up to 6-10 per cent of global revenue. Considering Meta’s 2025 revenue was greater than US$200 billion, $100 million may not be a strong disincentive weighed against the financial benefit of maximising engagement.

Thirdly, the legislation gives the minister significant powers to expand categories of harm without necessary protections. This power could be used to either extreme – to curtail free speech or to exempt big tech from the duty of care.

These powers should be removed, or safeguards should be included in the duty.

There are constructive fixes for these legislative weaknesses. On the whole, this legislation is a big step toward creating safer online spaces.

The ugly

The Coalition, One Nation and sections of the media are arguing that this reform is about the government controlling what you see online and curtailing free speech.

If anyone is controlling what you see, it’s the social media companies whose algorithms dictate what ends up on your feed.

Tech companies design algorithms to drive profits. That means keeping all of us scrolling online for as long as possible – they are monetising our attention – we are the product, not the customers.

Free speech is fundamental to our liberal democracy and it must be protected. But a simplistic scare campaign designed to fire up emotion and score political points will set back these reforms, allowing online harms to continue unchecked.

I’ll be working constructively to strengthen this legislation, because that’s what my community expects.

I encourage my parliamentary colleagues to join me in making sure this Digital Duty of Care does what it is supposed to do by holding online platforms accountable to creating safe spaces for all Australians.