Blurring the Bright Lines: Australia’s Failed Attempt to Regulate Misinformation
摘要
Australia’s approach to the regulation of mis/disinformation from 2019 to 2024 has shared some similar aspects to that of the European Union. The first response to the risks of mis/disinformation was initially via a self-regulatory code of practice. This was despite early recommendations of the competition regulator to implement a co-regulatory model. However, following a 2022 review that highlighted significant shortcomings in the self-regulatory code, the government released draft legislation in 2023 and then introduced a bill into the Australian Parliament in 2024 that adopted a co-regulatory approach. The draft legislation was the subject of vocal and sustained criticism from, for example, civil liberties groups but also from news organisations, based on perceived threats to freedom of speech. This is despite the draft bill’s explicit carve-out for news media. Meanwhile, academics and civil society groups argued that the bill does not go far enough to combat the threats mis/disinformation on digital platforms poses. Similar responses were seen a year later to a revised version of the co-regulatory approach: the government withdrew proposed legislation from Parliament after it failed to gain sufficient support. Australia’s staged trajectory to regulating mis/disinformation has therefore attempted to go one step beyond that of the UK, where at least elements of disinformation are included in its Online Safety Act 2023, even if fierce opposition to possible incursions on free speech resulted in the dismantling of the original provisions. Locating these responses within the wider context of curated platforms and contemporary news and information access, the chapter highlights how an understanding of automated content distribution (including journalism) is central to assessing mis/disinformation impacts. In this chapter we suggest that an important reason for the different reception to the measures addressing mis/disinformation is the way in which they have been framed as the subject of regulation. Australia’s response to dis/misinformation can be seen as an example of experimentation with both self-regulation and co-regulation prompted by the unique environment for digital platforms that presents challenges for some longstanding approaches to regulation.