eSafety Commissioner's Opening Statement to the Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety Inquiry
Good afternoon Chair and Committee. The eSafety team is pleased to be with you today.
We’ve obviously been following this inquiry with great interest and would like to acknowledge the incredible work of so many people in helping to create a safer online environment.
I’m sure you’ve seen that online safety is incredibly complex. It requires a multi-pronged and holistic approach. And a common theme that has resonated throughout is that the burden for online safety predominantly falls on the shoulders of children and vulnerable communities.
This must change. And the platforms must bear more responsibility for online safety.
At eSafety, we’ve developed a practical model to help shift that balance and help remediate online harms for Australians. And we focus on three key areas -Prevention, Protection and Proactive and Systemic change.
Through research and education, our primary goal is to prevent online harms from happening in the first place. We give people of all ages and backgrounds the tools to understand online risks and how to protect themselves.
But meaningful behavioural change takes time. We’re tracking our progress and we’re heartened to learn from recent research data that Australia is making strides by giving young people skills and confidence and encouraging them to seek help.
When online harm does occur, eSafety offers rapid redress through our complaint schemes. We investigate and take action to remove harmful content to reduce trauma, emotional distress and re-victimisation. We also gain really important insights into the types of harms that are occurring.
The Online Safety Act 2021
I am sure members of the Committee know the Online Safety Act just started over a week ago. This marks a new era for eSafety.
The Act gives us extensive new powers to protect our citizens online. It also enables us to take more action at the systemic and process level.
Australia now has the world’s first Adult Cyber Abuse scheme. This is a formal, complaints-based scheme with a high threshold, but robust enforcement powers. And it’s worth clarifying that eSafety does not monitor the internet for abusive content.
The Act is raising the bar on what government expects of the tech industry by introducing a Basic set of Online Safety Expectations, or the BOSE. Mandatory industry codes will also require the online industry to detect and remove illegal material while preventing access to harmful content.
Unlike our reporting schemes, the BOSE are not limited to specific forms of online harm and may enable us to shine light on systemic failings and will compel transparency that is currently lacking; tackling issues such as online hate, self-harm content and the extent to which algorithms contribute to harm.
eSafety can require online service providers to report on how they’re complying with these expectations. We’ll seek to lift the lid on safety issues industry is not addressing. This could be how they’re combatting anonymous abuse on their platforms; or halting mass creation of fake or imposter accounts to harm others; or, how they are preventing and responding to volumetric abuse, or pile-ons.
This will help to make sure we expose systemic weaknesses and address them.
Inquiry issues
It’s been helpful to hear the views about eSafety’s new powers and whether they go far enough, or give eSafety too much power.
We’re very aware that this new era of heightened responsibility brings more scrutiny.
We understand we won’t always make everyone happy or be able to remove harmful content in every instance. However, you have my word that we will continue to turn over every investigative rock.
We’ll be fair and judicious in how we exercise our new powers. Most Australians who come to us just want the content taken down as quickly as possible. Already, we’ve helped many thousands of Australians who’ve come to us for help when they’ve had nowhere else to turn. So, we believe in the power of these schemes, their ability to help everyday people, and the clear insights they give us about how platforms are performing.
Remediating individual harms or taking a systemic approach isn’t an either/or proposition. It is troubling that online abuse disproportionately targets women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, those who identify as LGBTIQ+ and those with a disability or other intersectional factors.
When assessing cases of serious cyber abuse, we can consider a range of these intersectional factors. Under the BOSE, we can also assess whether the platforms are consistently and effectively enforcing their terms of use, including their online hate policies.
We need more debate about how we deal with prejudice and hate in society and how that plays out online. Recognising that online hate speech is an issue that cuts across multiple remits. eSafety would welcome being part of this important discussion.
Conclusion
To conclude, it’s important we give this ground-breaking new Act a chance to provide extra protections for all Australians online and to hold big tech to account.
Australia, in our opinion, remains a leader in online safety, but there are major legislative movements in the UK and the European Union. These proposals will come with major penalties for non-compliance. So, it is important that Australia constantly seek to lead by evolving our regulatory approach and by keeping pace with threat trends and global movements.
We’ll continue to anticipate risks, and make sure safety by design becomes part of how we govern the metaverse and the decentralised Web 3.0 world.
These paradigm shifts are being driven by industry and without regard for how we will remediate the online harms they will generate.
Our focus will be on how we advance our new regulatory schemes and powers. We welcome this inquiry and what will be an important contribution to examining what we as a nation – and as an agency – can do to continue to serve our citizens, raise the bar for safety across the online industry, and remain online safety leaders.
In line with our mandate to coordinate government activities relating to online safety for all Australians, we would welcome the opportunity to lead any strategic or regulatory work relating to online safety which may arise from this inquiry.
Thank you very much.
Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner