Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says Australia has a 'once-in-a-decade chance' to fix its social media law
Australia is at risk of fumbling a "once-in-a-decade opportunity" to regulate social media, according to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Three years ago, Ms Haugen smuggled tens of thousands of documents out of the world's largest social media company, revealing that its executives knew the risks Facebook and Instagram posed to billions of users — in particular, children.
"Facebook's products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy," Ms Haugen said in her testimony to US Congress in August 2021.
That trove, referred to as "The Facebook Files", helped trigger global regulatory reform, and placed Ms Haugen at the forefront of those efforts, consulting with legislators in at least 11 countries.
The Australian government is now poised to update its key social media law the Online Safety Act, amid rising public anxiety about predatory algorithms.
Ms Haugen told the ABC's 7:30 program it's a rare chance for Australia to level the playing field with social media giants.
"[The Online Safety Act] was drafted in a context where we had rumours that something might be wrong with social media, but we didn't have the evidence," she said.
"We can now see the urgency."
But Ms Haugen warned that catchy, crowd-pleaser policies, such as banning children under 16 from social media, could jeopardise an historic chance for meaningful change.
"The challenge with — let's call it a 'bumper sticker solution' — is that they usually aren't very robust.
"In the case of bans, you're almost saying the problem with these platforms is the children, not the platforms themselves."
As well as shifting the regulatory burden to families, she said a ban may also create a false sense that the problem had been solved.
"When we just remove under 16-year-olds from the equation … that goes away," she said.
"It takes a lot of the urgency out of having conversations about building healthy systems overall."
Behind closed doors in Canberra, it's a big moment for online safety.
Australia's House of Representatives passed the Online Safety Act in 2021, and it is currently under review. (Tracey Nearmy // Via Getty Images)
Legislators always intended to review the 2021 law, but decided to do so a year early.
The review began in November 2023 and is due to report back in October.
Ms Haugen said while "bumper-sticker policies" were best left alone, the need to act was more acute than ever.
"We look at a 21-year-old who's struggling to make friends in college because they've lived online so much … that kid only went online when they were 13 or 14.
"When I talk to 13, 14-year-olds today, they've been on social media since they were eight or nine.
"And that's going to shape how they conceive of themselves for years and years to come."
The case for change: How Australia's key social media law is 'dated'
Australia was an early leader in online safety, but has slipped behind, according to Ms Haugen.
"For years, Australia was kind of a light in the darkness," she said.
"But a lot of the core concepts behind how Australia has approached online safety, namely a heavy emphasis on takedowns … it's a little dated."
Those "takedowns", also known as content removal notices, are issued by the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says regulators need more tools to keep the tech giants in check. (Four Corners: Keana Naughton)
Her best known "takedown" came to global attention in April this year, when she took Elon Musk's platform, X, to the Federal Court, seeking and ultimately failing to force him to conceal or remove footage of the Wakeley stabbing.
Australia's approach has meanwhile neglected more insidious risks, according to Ms Haugen, such as those posed by the all-important algorithms that govern what we see on social media, and keep us scrolling longer.
She said Australia's current laws left children exposed.
"A child that stays up til 2am, because they literally can't put their phone down, is a child that doesn't do as well in school the next day.
"They have a higher risk of dying of accidents; they're more likely to use drugs ... Those are all hidden costs of systems optimised for profit over public wellbeing."
She said while the focus is understandably on children they're not the only ones who suffer.
"I have trouble with 'doom scrolling'," she admitted.
"You have 25-year-olds [who] get pushed towards eating disorders, you have 35-year-olds [who] are pushed towards self-harm.
"All of us are impacted."
At a Senate Estimates hearing in May, Commissioner Inman Grant said strengthening Australia's laws was urgent, and Ms Haugen agrees.
"It's time to move forward and adopt some of the international best practices that have been set by the European Union … and pass a modern online safety law," she said.
How could we change our social media laws?
Like many online safety researchers, Ms Haugen cites the European Union's (EU) Digital Services Act as a north star.
Its defining characteristic is that its gaze is focused further upstream, at the source of online harms, rather than solely downstream, at the harms themselves.
"One of the challenges with technology is it moves so fast that wherever you put the fence, the companies run around it," Ms Haugen said.
Frances Haugen says Australian lawmakers are on the cusp of missing a once-in-a-decade opportunity to make real reforms in the tech industry (ABC News: Billy Cooper)
"The modern way of writing online safety laws … [is to] say, 'Hey, platforms, you know, your products better than we do. Tell us what risks you know and identify a plan on how you're going to reduce those risks'."
A new Australian law inspired by the EU's model would mean new powers to insist on improved transparency and safer design.
Ms Haugen said platforms such as Facebook and Instagram already had proven measures that had never been used on the public.
One example, she said, is slowing down a person's Instagram feed as their chosen bedtime approaches.
"It's almost like you're pushing a little bit harder to make the feed go," she said.
"We've known for 20 years that if you make an application milliseconds slower, people use it less.
"They even ran experiments, testing these solutions — they knew they could have an impact.
"But they chose not to do them because they resulted in small losses in profitability."
In a statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the government supported a social media age limit "where it is effective in its purpose, which is the protection — not isolation — of young people".
"The Commonwealth will continue engaging with experts, academics, parents and young people as part of the review of the Online Safety Act," the spokesperson said.
"The review is considering a range of new protections, including duty of care and how best to address new and emerging harms."
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