The Australia-US relationship could be tested when Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump rub shoulders at the UN general assembly in New York later this month. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP View image in fullscreen The Australia-US relationship could be tested when Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump rub shoulders at the UN general assembly in New York later this month. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP Opinion Social media Australia is on a collision course with US big tech. Could it cause Trump to turn on his ‘mate’? Mark Kenny Anthony Albanese wants social media algorithms to be optional – and it’s not the first Musk-Zuckerberg irritant emanating from Australia
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New risks to a deftly managed personal relationship with Donald Trump have not slowed the Australian prime minister’s plans for a showdown with America’s all-conquering social media companies.
Anthony Albanese, who will rub shoulders with the US president and other world leaders in New York later this month at the UN general assembly, is pushing ahead with changes that would impose fines on big tech firms under a newly created “digital duty of care”.
“Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day,” said the minister for communications, Anika Wells, while releasing the draft legislation.
Read more The change would also require social media platforms to provide users a guaranteed “opt-out” facility from the opaque algorithms that funnel polarising and harmful content to subscribers and expose them to carefully targeted advertising.
The government is calling it “empowering” for users, while critics are reaching for comparisons with communist China and using words like “Orwellian” .
Australia’s digital foray is being watched in Washington and Silicon Valley amid expectations it will stiffen the resolve of other countries to insulate their own polities from the wilds of disinformation, fakery and toxic political extremism.
Australia’s relationship with the US is routinely described as an enduring “mateship” based on strategically aligned interests as well as more basic cultural commonalities.
However, that amity will be tested if the famously tetchy Trump fixes on a new acronym for his Aussie “mate” – Make Albanese The Example.
Even so, it would not the be the first Trump-Musk-Zuckerberg irritant emanating from Australia.
These changes build on Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, legislated in November 2024.
While only partially effective, the ban drew the ire of the Trump administration and the social media titans, all of whom favour the unregulated populist character of social media over the “elitist” variety.
And there’s the news bargaining incentive, which forces social media companies to strike deals with Australian media outlets or pay a 2.5% tax on their Australian advertising revenues.
Australia’s changes to the calculation of tax liabilities of these companies have also caused consternation inside the Trump administration, which remains hyper-alert to mechanisms it believes operate like tariffs in another form.
Albanese’s apparent resolve to clip the powerful US corporations marks an interesting contrast with the more supine posture he adopted recently when addressing the flagrant social harms of gambling .
There, he resisted majority public…