Australia threatens hefty fines if big tech fails 'duty of care'

Australia released draft legislation requiring social media platforms to protect users under 18 from harmful content including pornography, bullying, crime glorification and eating-disorder material under a new digital duty of care framework. The draft bill empowers the eSafety Commissioner to issue removal notices for nudify apps and websites, streamline child cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse schemes, and impose fines of nearly 110 million Australian dollars on companies that breach their digital duty of care. The legislation also requires platforms to allow users to opt out of algorithmic feeds.

Statutory duty-of-care obligations set the floor; they do not specify the means. Detection infrastructure that identifies sustained targeting, escalation and coercion in children's direct messages addresses the underlying harm the duty is meant to prevent. Guardii, a Meta Business Partner, operates real-time detection across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, with modules for grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse material including AI-generated content, age-inappropriate contact and cyberbullying. The system blocks or flags hostile contact before it reaches a child, reports the shape and seriousness of a conversation rather than handing anyone a feed of what was said, surfaces a child in acute distress to a parent or school, and enables rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency. Where duty-of-care regulation mandates prevention of harm, targeted pattern detection provides the operational capability platforms require to meet that standard without restricting lawful access.