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The Albanese government has unveiled new social media laws that would force platforms to let users switch off algorithmic feeds and face fines of more than $100 million for failing a proposed \u201cdigital duty of care.\u201d<\/p>\n
The announcement lands after years of campaigning by consent advocate Chanel Contos, whose organisation Teach Us Consent received about $3.5 million in Commonwealth grant funding to produce social media resources aimed at reducing violence against women.<\/p>\n
Contos later became one of the most prominent voices behind \u201cFix Our Feeds,\u201d a campaign urging the government to make recommendation algorithms opt-in rather than the default. She has argued that platforms rapidly push young men into \u201cmanosphere\u201d content and that this is feeding a wider crisis of sexual violence.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed the government\u2019s \u201cMy Feed, My Way\u201d plan as a matter of user control, not state control. Under the draft digital duty of care, platforms would have to give over-16s lasting tools to turn off algorithm-driven recommendations and see only accounts they choose to follow. The government says companies would also have to limit children\u2019s exposure to pornography, eating-disorder content, crime glorification and misogynistic material. Non-compliance could attract penalties above $100 million.<\/p>\n
That sequence is now drawing a sharper political question: did Canberra fund an aligned activist, then treat her campaign as independent justification for a policy it already wanted?<\/p>\n
The grant itself was not a cheque written solely to pass a social media bill. Teach Us Consent was funded to create youth-facing prevention content after Contos rose to national prominence in 2021 with a petition that helped make consent education mandatory in schools. A much larger $100 million violence-prevention pledge announced by the former Morrison government, including money earmarked for her campaign, was never delivered as promised.<\/p>\n
What changed under Labor is the political use of the later work. Contos\u2019s organisation spent years arguing that algorithms were radicalising boys. Ministers then pointed to the same problem \u2014 harmful recommendation systems, especially misogynistic content \u2014 as a reason to give the eSafety Commissioner broader powers and to threaten platforms with nine-figure fines.<\/p>\n
The government rejects the idea that this is speech control. Albanese says the laws put choice back in users\u2019 hands and hold Big Tech responsible for design features that keep people scrolling. Officials also note that the under-16 social media ban, which took effect in December 2025, is already being tightened after evidence that many teenagers still get around it. Maximum penalties for systematic breaches of that ban have already been lifted toward the $99 million to $109 million range.<\/p>\n
Critics say the distinction is thinner than ministers claim. The fine is not drafted as a punishment for \u201cpromoting right-wing content.\u201d But a duty to suppress \u201cmisogynistic\u201d or otherwise harmful material leaves a wide zone of discretion. Once a regulator can order takedowns, demand internal documents and fine platforms more than $100 million, the argument goes, the political risk is obvious: contested cultural content becomes a compliance problem.<\/p>\n
There is also a process complaint. Governments routinely fund NGOs. They also routinely cite those NGOs when legislating. The objection here is the closed loop: public money helped build the campaign infrastructure; the campaign created the public case; the public case is now used to expand state power over the information environment.<\/p>\n
Whether that is ordinary policymaking or a form of advocacy laundering will be the fight as the draft laws go to consultation and then to parliament. The factual core is not in dispute. Labor funded Contos\u2019s organisation. Contos campaigned to restrain algorithms in the name of fighting the manosphere. Labor has now moved to restrain algorithms and attach nine-figure penalties to the result.<\/p>\n
The unresolved question is the one the government would rather not answer: if the campaign was always going to end in the policy Canberra wanted, why was the taxpayer paying for the campaign?<\/p>\n