Dolly’s Dream welcomes the release of the report of Australia’s Online Safety Act review. This groundbreaking report calls for a raft of changes to the legislation to make the digital environment a safer place for children.
While the report proposes many changes, we are especially interested in four recommendations that are particularly relevant to our Dolly’s Dream community, which is committed to changing the culture of bullying online and offline.
The report’s headline recommendation is that online services such as large social media and gaming platforms be required to adopt a ‘duty of care’ to their users, paying particular attention to the risks their products can pose to children.
At present, the digital environment is a high-risk space and children are expected to simply avoid dangerous situations and report problems after they occur. This situation places huge stress on families and is unacceptable.
The proposed new ‘duty of care’ approach would be different. It would require online services themselves to take steps in advance to make their platforms safer – or face fines of up to $50 million if they don’t. We welcome this recommendation, which has already been accepted broadly by the Australian Government.
Meanwhile, the report made several other recommendations of great interest to our Dolly’s Dream community.
Firstly, the report recommended that children who report being cyber bullied to the eSafety Commissioner should only have to wait a maximum of 24 hours before eSafety can issue a notice to the platform to get the content removed. At present, children may have to wait up to 48 hours. Given how rapidly cyber bullying material can spread and the distress it causes to families, we would welcome this change. (Of course, we want platforms themselves to take the content down in less time than 24 hours. A notice by eSafety is a ‘last resort’.)
Meanwhile, the report called upon the Australian Government explore how to stop search engines and app stores from surfacing, selling, or distributing ‘nudify’ or ‘undressing’ apps and undetectable stalking apps. We are aware of some appalling cases involving such apps in our school communities. Making such items harder to access would be a very positive step.
The report also recommended giving the eSafety Commission the power to inform teachers, school principals and parents when a child makes a report of image-based abuse. We hope such a change will enable children to get the support and care they need from the adults around them more quickly. Given the highly sensitive nature of the topic, we trust the regulatory staff involved in this work have the skills and experience they need to manage these urgent but painful conversations.
Finally, the report recommended that the online safety regulator connect better with communities that have been ‘hard to reach’, including through in-person outreach and hard copy resources. In particular, the report called for clear, simple messaging for communities about how to make a complaint about an online safety concern.
We know that our rural, remote, regional and boarding school communities have many concerns about online safety. But they have often found that traditional ‘online safety’ initiatives have not really hit the mark. Hopefully this report will lead to a stronger focus on supporting these communities to build their skills and leadership to help children have safe and positive experiences online.
We were pleased to see Dolly’s Dream’s own advocacy recognized in the report and we look forward to opportunities for input into the Australian Government’s next steps.
