eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has offered to testify at the US congressional hearings about Australia’s efforts to regulate the tech giants.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
In a letter to the chairs of the Senate hearings this week,Communications Minister Paul Fletcher and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the issues the US committees were grappling with “are ones of truly global impact”,adding that Australia’s “leading regulatory approach” had been internationally recognised.
The letter included an offer for Ms Inman Grant to give evidence to the committees on Australia’s actions,noting that the World Economic Forum in June had recommended that other nations should consider forming a body specific to online safety,“such as Australia’s eSafety Commissioner”.
“We have done extensive work on the issue of online safety in Australia – including the impacts of social media on the safety and mental health of particular groups including children and young people;women;older people;and indigenous people,” the pair wrote in the letter,dated Thursday.
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The letter said the government had “observed with interest” the evidence before the committees of reports of internal research commissioned by Facebook. Ms Haugen,whose evidence was heavily rejected by Facebook,covertly compiled troves of internal company documents before departing the company in May,including research showing Facebook’s Instagram was intensifying body image and mental health issues among young girls.
Mr Fletcher and Ms Inman Grant also spruiked the government’s “Safety by Design” initiative,which provides guidance for companies on how to embed safety protections into their products.
“We advocate for this initiative to be adopted globally,especially given that so many major platforms – including Snapchat,Google,Facebook,Twitter and NextDoor – have endorsed the principles as actionable and achievable,” the letter said.