Digital Duty of Care, explained
What Australia's Digital Duty of Care draft means for your feed: the algorithm opt-out, rules for under-16s, the penalties, and the fight in Parliament.
What Australia's Digital Duty of Care draft means for your feed: the algorithm opt-out, rules for under-16s, the penalties, and the fight in Parliament.
On 8 September 2026 the Albanese Government put its Digital Duty of Care exposure draft out for consultation. It's selling the headline part as My Feed, My Way. Strip the branding off and the question underneath is simple. Who designs the default on your phone?
Consultation closed on 22 September. The government says it will put a bill to Parliament this year.
A legal duty to keep users safe. Anyone responsible for an online service would have to ensure a safe online environment "so far as is reasonably practicable". That test comes straight out of workplace safety law. It covers far more than social media: search engines, app stores, messaging, hosting and AI tools that make content are all in.
A choice of feed. Social media platforms would have to send new and existing users a notification offering a choice. Keep a default feed with personalised recommendations, or switch to one that only shows the friends and creators you follow. Anika Wells says you can change your mind "over and over". The fine print of the tool, including defaults and how often you get asked, would be set later by legislative instrument.
Test for harm first. Platforms would have to do a written risk assessment for each service at least once a year, and before any change that adds new risk. They'd have to keep those assessments for six years and hand them to eSafety within 30 days of a request. Right now most of the system waits for a complaint after the damage is done. This flips the order.
Tighter rules for kids. For everyone under 18, services including games, apps and AI chatbots would have to protect kids from addictive design and from content like pornography, eating disorder material, bullying and content hostile to women. For under-16s on social media, the draft goes further. Recommender feeds, endless scroll, like counts and disappearing stories would have to be switched off for them, even when they aren't logged in.
Big penalties. Breach the duty and a company faces up to $109.2 million, with eSafety enforcing. The Rickard Review had recommended 5 per cent of global turnover. The government went with a fixed cap instead.
Faster takedowns. Removal deadlines for cyberbullying, image-based abuse and adult cyber abuse would drop from 48 hours to 24. eSafety would get power to order removal of nudify apps and sites.
Most of the duty would start 12 months after the law passes. The takedown changes would start the next day.
People keep merging the two. They're separate machines.
The social media minimum age is about accounts. It says under-16s can't hold them on age-restricted platforms. The Digital Duty of Care is about design. It covers how feeds rank content and what safety work a platform does before harm lands. One law checks who's on the platform. The other checks how the platform is built.
The two do meet at one point. The under-16 design rules would apply to logged-out viewing, which is exactly where the account ban leaks.
Labor sells it as choice. Albanese says the point is "giving people control".
The Coalition says it will oppose the draft in its current form. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor called it "a blank cheque for political censorship". Shadow Communications Minister Sarah Henderson called it an "absolute threat to free speech". Their main target is the power for the minister to add new categories of harm by regulation. They also point out the draft doesn't itself guarantee the feed choice. It leaves that to later instruments.
Wells says she can "emphatically rule … out" the law being used to police misinformation. "This is about the systems and the tools and the features that cause harm," she said. On 13 September she said she was open to letting Parliament, not the minister, decide new harms.
The Greens want it tougher. Sarah Hanson-Young has her own Fix Our Feeds bill before the Senate, which would make the algorithm a "genuine opt-in", off until you switch it on. The Greens also want penalties tied to global revenue. The Fix Our Feeds name started with Teach Us Consent, the campaign group founded by Chanel Contos, which welcomed the draft.
The United States has weighed in too. In a submission dated 22 September, the US Embassy in Canberra said forced chronological feeds or opt-in recommendations were a concern. It said the US "would likely consider such a measure as facilitating censorship". It asked Australia to "withdraw any plans to mandate that platforms algorithmically suppress content based on ambiguous government-defined safety criteria". Asked in New York about critics who say it will limit political speech, Albanese called that "nonsense".
If the feed choice gets buried three menus deep, users pay. They get the language of control while the feed still runs the evening. Europe already makes the biggest platforms offer a feed that isn't based on profiling. The risk is a switch nobody can find.
If the list of harms can grow by ministerial decision, voters pay. They lose a say over a power that keeps expanding. Wells' offer to hand that call to Parliament is the most important concession on the table.
Platforms pay only if eSafety actually enforces, and a fixed $109.2 million cap is a rounding error for the biggest of them. That's the part to watch.
The government decides what survives consultation, then introduces a bill. It needs to get through both houses. Expect the Senate to be where the harm definition and the default setting get fought over.
Will the government decide what I see? The draft makes platforms offer you a choice between feeds. It doesn't pick posts. The fight is over who can widen the list of harms platforms must manage.
Will the algorithm be turned off by default? The draft doesn't settle it. Platforms would have to ask you to choose, and the detail, including defaults, would be set later by legislative instrument. The Greens want it off unless you switch it on. For under-16s on social media, recommender feeds would be off.
Is this law yet? No. It's an exposure draft. Consultation closed on 22 September 2026. It still has to become a bill and pass Parliament.
Is this the same as the under-16 social media ban? No. The ban is about accounts. This is about design and defaults.
Rico Holt · ricoholt.com
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