Rights First: Principles for Digital Platforms Regulation
REPORT | Read the report here
Our human rights matter online and offline. As harmful misinformation and disinformation poisons Australia’s democracy, the Human Rights Law Centre is calling on the Albanese Government to stop big tech regulating itself as part of a new report: Rights-First: Principles for Digital Platform Regulation.
Online platforms like Meta, X and TikTok should be a place where anyone can come together to communicate, share and connect. But Australia’s weak laws that allow big tech platforms to regulate themselves are not working. Digital platforms will never fix the problem without government intervention because they profit from amplifying misinformation and hate speech on their services.
This is impacting people’s safety online, distorting public debate, eroding trust in democracy and democratic institutions and causing real world harm to people and communities.
To address this, the Rights-First report recommends that the Albanese Government:
Appoint an independent regulator to set the rules and standards platforms must follow;
Require platforms to consider and address the human rights impacts of their products and services;
Impose a legislated duty of care on platforms for their users. This would make sure platforms have to make sure their systems and products do not cause or enable harm; and
Impose significant penalties for digital platform non-compliance.