{"id":885442,"date":"2026-09-09T08:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T08:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/885442\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T08:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T08:18:12","slug":"trump-administration-to-confront-australia-over-labors-social-media-algorithm-plan-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/885442\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration to confront Australia over Labor\u2019s social media algorithm plan | Social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration will confront Australia over its plan to force digital platforms to take down harmful content and let users opt out of algorithm-generated \u201cfor you\u201d feeds.<\/p>\n

Big tech companies would be fined more than $100m for breaching the proposed laws and the Australian government is under pressure to raise those fines even further.<\/p>\n

A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, said the US administration would raise its concerns with \u201ctrading partners\u201d, in a statement released less than 24 hours after Australia\u2019s announcement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump has unequivocally warned trading partners against imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion on America\u2019s leading technology sector,\u201d Desai said.<\/p>\n

The communications minister, Anika Wells, downplayed the statement as \u201cbroad\u201d and told News24 she had not directly received any such warning from a US representative.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a sovereign nation,\u201d Wells said. \u201cWe have the right to defend Australian parents and kids and we\u2019ll do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If passed, the digital duty of care laws would require platforms to protect children from harmful content around eating disorders, misogyny, pornography, glorifying crime, abuse and cyberbullying. Adults and children would need to be protected from illegal material.<\/p>\n

They would also require platforms to send users a notification or \u201cpop-up\u201d, giving them a choice between a main feed that shows personalised content from across the platform or one that shows only content shared by their online connections.<\/p>\n

The Greens party has demanded the government make the latter option the default setting and force platforms to let users opt in to having personalised feeds.<\/p>\n

The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young repeated calls for higher fines to be pegged to companies\u2019 global revenue, speaking to ABC radio on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig tech is going to spend a lot of money fighting these laws in the first place and finding every which way to get around them,\u201d Hanson-Young said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to hit them really where it hurts, and that\u2019s their revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big tech companies Meta, Google and TikTok have not publicly commented, though their representative lobby group, Digi, has said the law\u2019s definitions of harmful content and impact on user experience would be crucial.<\/p>\n

OpenAI, owner of ChatGPT, said it planned to engage with the government on its laws to ensure they were \u201cprotecting Australians while enabling them to benefit from AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Australian businesses have warned the rules could hurt their own revenue, as Australians who opt out of algorithms may stop seeing advertisements and buying from companies that sell via online platforms.<\/p>\n

The Council of Small Business Organisations Australia has asked the government to model the costs to small businesses and their visibility in feeds.<\/p>\n

The Labor government is also facing backlash from local conservatives, with the Coalition accusing Labor of using the bill to censor free speech.<\/p>\n

The proposal would give the communications minister the power to set new definitions for harmful content that would have to be taken down.<\/p>\n

The Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, said this could extend to political speech that opposed the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t trust big tech, but I trust the Labor party a lot less,\u201d Canavan said.<\/p>\n

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Canavan\u2019s comments were \u201cdisingenuous\u201d as the Senate would be able to reject the minister\u2019s definitions.<\/p>\n

Wells has repeatedly committed to leaving political content and misinformation outside the scope of the laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour right to be wrong on the internet remains preserved in the digital duty of care,\u201d Wells said. \u201cIf you want to believe that the moon landing was fake, it is in no way impacted by the digital duty of care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration will confront Australia over its plan to force digital platforms to take down harmful content…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-885442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}