Australia is developing draft legislation to implement a Digital Duty of Care under the Online Safety Act 2021, which will require online service providers operating in Australia to take reasonable measures to prevent serious harms on their platforms. The duty-of-care reforms are designed to complement the Social Media Minimum Age law restricting access for those under 16 and requiring age assurance measures. The government framework establishes that online service providers are best placed to manage risks of serious harm associated with use of their services, applying to any company operating in Australia regardless of where it is headquartered.
Instead of forcing platforms to guess which users might be children and lock them out entirely, deploying AI detection of actual hostile contact—grooming attempts, sextortion demands, CSAM solicitation—fulfills the duty of care with surgical precision. Guardii, backed by Startmate and a Meta Business Partner, already operates this model at scale: real-time monitoring of direct messages across major platforms surfaces a child in acute danger to the parent, school counselor or law-enforcement authority who can intervene, without reading every conversation or banning millions of compliant users. That is proportionate harm prevention, not demographic exclusion.
