US warns Australian digital duty of care bill could facilitate censorship

The United States has publicly criticised Australia's proposed digital duty of care laws, in an unusually direct intervention into a domestic policy debate. The submission says the draft bill could amount to "extraterritorial censorship of protected speech" and urges Canberra to exclude US social media companies from the plan. The proposal would give Australians the option to opt out of algorithmic recommendation feeds, while also requiring platforms to take steps to mitigate and respond to harms.

Sponsored

The US submission was published by the US Embassy on Tuesday and was made in response to a consultation on the draft legislation. It said Washington had "serious concerns" about how Australia would define "foreseeable harm" and warned against what it described as rigid, one-size-fits-all design requirements. The document also asked how Australia would define "harm" and "risks", how those terms would be adjudicated, and who would make those decisions.

According to the submission, the US government believes the proposed rules could push platforms to demote sensitive or controversial topics in order to comply. It said that could reduce the reach of independent journalists and other voices. The submission added that the US government would likely consider such a measure as facilitating censorship.

The intervention comes while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in New York promoting Australian technology policy at the United Nations. The dispute matters because it places Australia's online safety and platform regulation agenda in direct tension with Washington's concerns about speech and market access. The draft duty of care bill is intended to make digital platforms more accountable for harms linked to their services, but the US response suggests the proposal could become a wider transnational policy issue.

Sponsored

It also comes as Albanese's support for international AI regulation and his government's teen social media ban have already drawn criticism from the Trump administration. The row highlights the growing pressure on governments trying to regulate large technology companies that operate across borders. The US submission specifically called for American social media companies to be excluded from the Australian plan, saying that would effectively remove the biggest platforms from the law's scope.

That would significantly weaken the bill if adopted, because the largest services would no longer be covered by the proposed obligations. Communications Minister Anika Wells and the federal government are still developing the legislation, and the consultation process is ongoing. It is not yet clear how Canberra will respond to the US objections or whether the draft bill will be amended.

The key questions now are how Australia defines harm, who decides what counts as foreseeable risk, and whether the government will narrow the law's reach to address the criticism.

#Australia #UnitedStates #digitaldutyofcare #censorship #socialmediaregulation

Sponsored