# Will the ‘Albo-rithm’ censor the internet?

An episode of [7am](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1461999702), 12 Oct 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/62723a1f-3e96-4fc4-882c-b25e0181da4d/f3b56428-0401-4f12-9d9d-b4e1005841b1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=70f29d90-2a63-48aa-bf8f-b25e0181da70

The Coalition is saying that soon, you won’t be able to criticise the Prime Minister on the internet. It’s part of its campaign against Labor’s proposed Digital Duty of Care – which the opposition has branded the “Albo-rithm”, arguing it would give the government the power to decide what Australians can see and say online. So what’s actually in the government’s bill? And how far does it go towards addressing the harms created by social media and its algorithms? Today, Digital Rights Watch chair Lizzie O’Shea on whether Labor can force Big Tech to change what we’re served – and why Donald Trump’s White House has now weighed in. If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support. Socials: Stay in touch with us on Instagram Guest: Chair of Digital Rights Watch, Lizzie O’Shea Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey Phil, how would you describe Albo?
[0:02] Speaker 2: Albo is a leader who puts principle above popularity.
[0:05] Speaker 3: Albo is an absolute phenomenal golfer.
[0:08] Speaker 2: He always gets holes in.
[0:09] Speaker 4: One whenever he plays.
[0:09] Speaker 5: The Coalition is saying that soon you won't be able
[0:12] Speaker 5: to criticise the Prime Minister on the internet. I don't
[0:15] Speaker 5: trust Labor to censor Australian social media.
[0:18] Speaker 4: Do you?
[0:20] Speaker 5: It's part of its campaign against Labor's proposed digital duty
[0:23] Speaker 5: of care, which the opposition has branded the Albo Rhythm.
[0:27] Speaker 5: arguing it would give the government the power to decide
[0:30] Speaker 5: what Australians can see and say online. So what's actually
[0:35] Speaker 5: in the government's bill, and how far does it go
[0:37] Speaker 5: to addressing the harms created by social media and its algorithms?
[0:45] Speaker 5: I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to 7am. Today, Chair
[0:51] Speaker 5: of Digital Rights Watch Liz Yoshae, on whether Labor can
[0:54] Speaker 5: force big tech to change what it serves us, and
[0:57] Speaker 5: why Donald Trump's White House has now weighed in. It's Tuesday,
[1:04] Speaker 5: October 13. Lizzie, when it comes to the government's digital
[1:13] Speaker 5: duty of care, we've heard a lot about one particular
[1:16] Speaker 5: part of this proposal, giving people the ability to switch
[1:19] Speaker 5: off the algorithms that control their feed. But more broadly,
[1:23] Speaker 5: tell me about what's actually in this bill.
[1:25] Speaker 4: Yes, so the requirements of this bill is that it
[1:28] Speaker 4: creates a digital duty of care on certain kinds of
[1:31] Speaker 4: internet service providers, social media platforms and the like.
[1:34] Speaker 6: The same way that we have safety standards for cars,
[1:38] Speaker 6: for food, for appliances, Australia is setting basic safety standards
[1:43] Speaker 6: for the online tools and online services within our digital
[1:47] Speaker 6: duty of care.
[1:49] Speaker 4: The proposal is that these services have to provide a
[1:52] Speaker 4: safe online environment. And what that means is that they
[1:56] Speaker 4: have to protect users from certain kinds of content.
[1:58] Speaker 6: So the kind of serious harms that we're talking about here,
[2:02] Speaker 6: that adults will be prevented from engaging in online, child
[2:05] Speaker 6: sexual exploitation, child abuse material, child grooming, violence, sexual violence, menacing,
[2:11] Speaker 6: threatening or harassment, and the promotion of terrorism and extremency.
[2:16] Speaker 4: And then when it comes to children, there's a more
[2:18] Speaker 4: expansive list, which includes things like bullying content, content about
[2:23] Speaker 4: eating disorders and the like, as well as pornography. And
[2:26] Speaker 4: the idea is that platforms and other internet service providers
[2:29] Speaker 4: will have to protect people from that content. They'll have
[2:32] Speaker 4: to conduct risk assessments as well, and they'll have to
[2:35] Speaker 4: manage design features that are considered particularly harmful.
[2:42] Speaker 5: Okay, can you talk to me a little bit more
[2:44] Speaker 5: about that, about what creating a duty of care actually
[2:48] Speaker 5: solves that existing online safety laws haven't been able to?
[2:52] Speaker 4: Yeah, so online safety laws in Australia have been quite prescriptive.
[2:56] Speaker 4: There's a bunch of codes and basic online safety expectations
[2:59] Speaker 4: that have been set up. we're moving into a much
[3:02] Speaker 4: more straightforward overarching concept where we say to platforms, for example,
[3:08] Speaker 4: you have a duty of care. So it's not the
[3:10] Speaker 4: user's obligation to work out what is harmful and protect themselves.
[3:14] Speaker 4: There's this overarching duty of care owed to users and
[3:18] Speaker 4: it puts the obligation back on the platform to do
[3:20] Speaker 4: that work. Now, I think what's interesting also about the
[3:23] Speaker 4: duty of care is that it does impose the obligation
[3:26] Speaker 4: to conduct risk assessments and rather than all this research
[3:30] Speaker 4: and analysis kept within the company, then instead they'll have
[3:34] Speaker 4: to do this work and share it with members of
[3:36] Speaker 4: the public and others, which gives us a better understanding
[3:39] Speaker 4: of what kinds of risks there are online.
[3:42] Speaker 5: And the big political argument now is over who gets
[3:45] Speaker 5: to decide what harm actually is. The Coalition is calling
[3:50] Speaker 5: this the Alborhythm. They say it gives the government the
[3:53] Speaker 5: power to censor lawful speech.
[3:55] Speaker 1: Supporting or going forward with this digital duty of care
[3:58] Speaker 1: legislation would be like putting Anthony Albanese in charge of
[4:03] Speaker 1: refereeing a South Sydney Rabideaus game. He's a big Rabideaus fan.
[4:07] Speaker 1: He can't be trusted to be the umpire.
[4:09] Speaker 5: One Nation is calling it CCP, communist style internet censorship.
[4:14] Speaker 3: So everything is about control the people. This stinks of
[4:18] Speaker 3: the Marxism and communism. It's about controlling the people, your
[4:23] Speaker 3: thought process. And once you do that, we've lost our democracy.
[4:26] Speaker 5: So under this draft, who actually decides what counts as
[4:31] Speaker 5: harmful and what checks are there on that power?
[4:34] Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think the first thing to say is
[4:36] Speaker 4: when you go online, what you see is a curated
[4:39] Speaker 4: set of content that is designed by the businesses that
[4:43] Speaker 4: run these online spaces. And they have particular motivations. Often
[4:47] Speaker 4: they're trying to keep you online because they can expose
[4:49] Speaker 4: you to advertising, which is their business model. They often
[4:52] Speaker 4: have algorithms that prioritise certain kind of content that keep
[4:55] Speaker 4: you online for as long as possible, and it tends
[4:57] Speaker 4: to be more extreme. So the allegations or the claims
[5:01] Speaker 4: that this is a real promotion of censorship have to
[5:04] Speaker 4: be understood in that context. The other big problem I've
[5:07] Speaker 4: got with this bill currently is there is an issue
[5:10] Speaker 4: of enforcement. How do we make sure that companies are
[5:13] Speaker 4: complying When we look at the Safety Commissioner, it's a
[5:16] Speaker 4: relatively well-resourced regulator, but currently that commissioner is regulating some
[5:22] Speaker 4: of the largest companies in the world, and it's very
[5:23] Speaker 4: difficult to do that effectively, even with a large budget.
[5:27] Speaker 4: And there's a question around whether the regulator alone should
[5:30] Speaker 4: be doing that work, whether we need, like what we've
[5:33] Speaker 4: seen in places like the United States, the right of
[5:35] Speaker 4: people to bring actions directly against these platforms when they've
[5:39] Speaker 4: caused harm. And I think there's some real utility in
[5:42] Speaker 4: thinking through how enforcement could work outside of just the
[5:46] Speaker 4: regulator being the sole source of enforcement.
[5:49] Speaker 5: Okay, so there's this broad acknowledgement, I think, that algorithms
[5:52] Speaker 5: cause harm. So is what's being considered here enough, or
[5:57] Speaker 5: do you think we need more transparency about how platforms
[6:00] Speaker 5: are actually deciding what gets promoted and what gets suppressed
[6:03] Speaker 5: in the first place.
[6:04] Speaker 4: So there's a whole section of the bill that kind
[6:07] Speaker 4: of sits alongside the digital duty of care, which talks
[6:09] Speaker 4: about user empowerment tools. And there is very little detail
[6:13] Speaker 4: about what those user empowerment tools will be. So there
[6:17] Speaker 4: is a lot of complexity around this, like how you
[6:18] Speaker 4: make a user empowerment tool actually useful to users is
[6:23] Speaker 4: a bit of a thorny question. There's been in other
[6:25] Speaker 4: parts of the world, what has been described as malicious compliance,
[6:28] Speaker 4: whereby some of these companies make it difficult to continue
[6:32] Speaker 4: to maintain your preferences in what you might see in
[6:34] Speaker 4: your feed, for example, having to go through lots of
[6:37] Speaker 4: pop-ups and the like and continually restate what your preferences are.
[6:42] Speaker 4: And I think that is a problem, right? We have
[6:43] Speaker 4: to work out ways in which we can make it
[6:46] Speaker 4: as easy as possible to give people greater control over
[6:49] Speaker 4: what their online space looks like. And we're working in
[6:53] Speaker 4: this instance in dialogue with a bunch of companies that
[6:55] Speaker 4: might have business incentives that work against that. So it
[6:59] Speaker 4: would be a disappointing outcome, I think, if where it
[7:02] Speaker 4: led to was people just defaulting back to what they
[7:04] Speaker 4: currently have, which prioritises the interests of platforms, I think,
[7:08] Speaker 4: too often and can have really negative consequences. But we'll
[7:12] Speaker 4: have to see how that detail unfolds. And I think
[7:16] Speaker 4: there is a broader point here as well. How do
[7:18] Speaker 4: we make sure that content that is monetised online or
[7:21] Speaker 4: advertising content that appears in your feed is regulated? Advertising
[7:26] Speaker 4: can be really harmful because You know, we know that
[7:28] Speaker 4: some of the biggest advertisers on social media platforms are
[7:31] Speaker 4: fast food, gambling companies, alcohol companies, and they're very precise
[7:35] Speaker 4: in when they target you with particular forms of ads
[7:38] Speaker 4: based on your browsing history, your user history, the time
[7:41] Speaker 4: of day, what you might be exhibiting in terms of
[7:44] Speaker 4: your emotional state. Now, at the moment, advertising content is
[7:49] Speaker 4: pretty much excluded from the digital duty of care, but
[7:52] Speaker 4: there are, I think, some interesting ways in which we
[7:54] Speaker 4: could start to look at that issue. including by creating
[7:58] Speaker 4: ad libraries, for example, of all ads served on social media,
[8:02] Speaker 4: which would give people a greater understanding of what kind
[8:04] Speaker 4: of content is being prioritised in their feed that's paid for,
[8:08] Speaker 4: that justifies the business model, and perhaps criticising or coming
[8:12] Speaker 4: to terms with what is the social licence to operate
[8:14] Speaker 4: and whether we should have restrictions on advertising as it
[8:17] Speaker 4: appears in your feed, for example.
[8:22] Speaker 5: Still to come, why Donald Trump is weighing in on
[8:25] Speaker 5: all of this. Lizzie, the Trump administration has now made
[8:36] Speaker 5: a formal submission attacking this proposal and asking for American
[8:41] Speaker 5: social media companies to effectively be carved out of it.
[8:45] Speaker 1: Fears have been raised that new fines and taxes for
[8:48] Speaker 1: tech giants could be regarded as extortion by Donald Trump.
[8:52] Speaker 5: How unusual is it to have the US government intervene
[8:56] Speaker 5: publicly in Australian domestic legislation like this?
[9:00] Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not surprised on one level that the
[9:03] Speaker 4: Trump administration has intervened into this discussion. The e-safety regime
[9:09] Speaker 4: that we've had in place beforehand has also been criticised
[9:11] Speaker 4: by the Trump administration in some of the early executive orders. Clearly,
[9:15] Speaker 4: the United States understands the economic power of these large
[9:18] Speaker 4: platforms operating in different parts of the world, and there's
[9:22] Speaker 4: a clear alliance between big tech and the White House currently.
[9:26] Speaker 4: And that is manifesting in these kinds of discussions. We've
[9:29] Speaker 4: seen that in all sorts of contexts in relation to
[9:31] Speaker 4: the regulation of artificial intelligence, as well as social media platforms,
[9:35] Speaker 4: often which are the same companies, I should say. And
[9:38] Speaker 4: so I think there's a real sense that the White
[9:41] Speaker 4: House gets its support from large tech, that this is
[9:44] Speaker 4: the future of the American economy and American dominance and
[9:47] Speaker 4: American imperialism. And so a real concern around initiatives that
[9:51] Speaker 4: seek to undermine the effectiveness of that business model and
[9:54] Speaker 4: the domination of US tech platforms around the world. I
[9:58] Speaker 4: think the reality is that the government probably expected something
[10:02] Speaker 4: like this, but also that most Australians expect their lawmakers
[10:07] Speaker 4: to make policy and law that suits them. So I
[10:10] Speaker 4: think it is important that the Albanese government consider what
[10:14] Speaker 4: it is that Australians want when they use this technology.
[10:17] Speaker 4: and not just give in to diplomatic pressure from a
[10:20] Speaker 4: White House that I don't think many Australians trust as
[10:23] Speaker 4: a source of good policy.
[10:25] Speaker 5: And so if Australia did do what the US is
[10:27] Speaker 5: asking and exempted American companies, what would actually be left
[10:31] Speaker 5: of this law?
[10:32] Speaker 4: So there is a large number of companies that will
[10:34] Speaker 4: be affected by the digital duty of care, but I
[10:37] Speaker 4: think it's fair to say When we're talking about the
[10:39] Speaker 4: digital duty of care, most people are thinking about large
[10:42] Speaker 4: social media companies that provide services, including as accessed by children.
[10:47] Speaker 4: That's quite clearly the framing of the legislation and particularly
[10:49] Speaker 4: design features that we talked about before in terms of
[10:53] Speaker 4: making sure that they're managed effectively as a component of
[10:56] Speaker 4: the digital duty of care, but also giving people user
[10:58] Speaker 4: empowerment tools. they're really aimed at social media platforms. So
[11:03] Speaker 4: I think if those companies were excluded, which I think
[11:06] Speaker 4: would be unlikely at this point, given the politics of it,
[11:10] Speaker 4: but if they were, I think it would greatly diminish
[11:13] Speaker 4: the utility of this legislative initiative. And I think it
[11:16] Speaker 4: would be a huge scandal.
[11:20] Speaker 5: And the government, it now has all of these submissions.
[11:23] Speaker 5: So When we do finally see that bill, what will
[11:26] Speaker 5: you be looking at to tell whether or not it
[11:29] Speaker 5: will be effective and whether pressure from the US and
[11:32] Speaker 5: tech companies has actually weakened it?
[11:35] Speaker 4: Yeah, so what I'll be looking for when this bill
[11:37] Speaker 4: is ultimately tabled is I'd love to see some statements
[11:41] Speaker 4: in what we call the extraneous materials, like the second
[11:44] Speaker 4: reading speech, the explanatory memorandum, that talk about rights, like
[11:47] Speaker 4: I mentioned before, like freedom of expression, freedom of the
[11:50] Speaker 4: press and the like. so that that can be balanced
[11:52] Speaker 4: as people who will have to interpret this legislation do
[11:55] Speaker 4: that work. I would really love to see some greater
[12:01] Speaker 4: consideration of how we can enforce this without putting too
[12:04] Speaker 4: much onus on the regulator and give courts a role.
[12:06] Speaker 4: I actually think courts have a really important job in
[12:09] Speaker 4: interpreting exactly some of the questions that we were talking
[12:12] Speaker 4: about before, how rights intersect with each other, but also
[12:15] Speaker 4: what might be considered harmful, how that reflects social values.
[12:19] Speaker 4: Courts are well placed to do that over time as
[12:22] Speaker 4: opposed to legislation which is enshrined in a particular moment.
[12:25] Speaker 4: And so I think if we start to see some
[12:27] Speaker 4: of those things implemented into the bill, then we'll know
[12:30] Speaker 4: that the government has decided that this is important enough,
[12:34] Speaker 4: I think, to risk the ire of the White House,
[12:37] Speaker 4: which I'm sure will still object, and really decide to
[12:41] Speaker 4: make a policy stand that many people have been campaigning
[12:45] Speaker 4: for for a long time and also many people expect
[12:48] Speaker 4: in the electorate. And this is going to be a
[12:50] Speaker 4: critical test for the government.
[12:53] Speaker 5: Lizzie, thank you so much for your time.
[12:55] Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
[13:11] Speaker 2: Also in the news, the imam of a Melbourne mosque,
[13:14] Speaker 2: which has been linked to the pilot accused of trying
[13:16] Speaker 2: to hijack a FlyJubilee plane, has spoken out for the
[13:19] Speaker 2: first time. Referring to false allegations, Samir Matadi didn't directly
[13:24] Speaker 2: address the claims, but in a video posted on social
[13:27] Speaker 2: media said, the righteous will always be attacked. It's after
[13:31] Speaker 2: the United Arab Emirates Attorney General claimed the pilot had
[13:34] Speaker 2: started to drift towards extremism while studying in Melbourne and
[13:38] Speaker 2: became acquainted with people linked to the Broadmeadows Mosque. And
[13:42] Speaker 2: Barnaby Joyce has joined the Greens in calling for the
[13:45] Speaker 2: government to block Australians from watching the live stream execution
[13:48] Speaker 2: of a US prisoner. The former US Major, who fatally
[13:51] Speaker 2: shot 13 unarmed soldiers in 2009, is set to be
[13:55] Speaker 2: executed by firing squad in the US in December. Joyce
[13:59] Speaker 2: likened the execution to a Roman amphitheatre, saying he doesn't
[14:03] Speaker 2: agree with it. I'm Daniel James, thanks for listening to 7am.
[14:07] Speaker 2: We'll be back tomorrow.
[14:08] Speaker 4: Music you

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