Online safety heat on big tech

FACEBOOK, Twitter, YouTube and other tech giants would be forced to proactively “patrol, detect, remove and deter” illegal or harmful content on their sites under new online safety laws recommended in a landmark review.

The Coalition will take the proposed laws to the federal election after accepting “in principle” all of the recommendations in former head of the Australian public service Lynelle Briggs’ review.

“The current laws rightly focus on protecting children but technology and online user behaviours have changed since they were introduced,” Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said. “It is now time to revisit them.”

Facebook, Google and other tech giants would face a “much higher new benchmark” under a new single set of online safety laws recommended by Ms Briggs.

They will replace three current sets of legislation.

A new National Online Safety Plan would also be developed and launched by 2020 and the Office of the eSafety Commissioner would get extra resources.

“Major change is required,” Ms Briggs said, adding that the current system of industry co-regulation was “insufficient to address the threats of harm”.

It comes as the Government today releases a firstlook at a new online safety charter, which will set expectations for tech giants including that default settings on devices, games and apps should be the highest privacy setting.