This policy brief considers and responds to the issues paper published by the Australian Government on the considerations informing the design of the proposed duty of care - A Digital Duty of Care for Australia—Developing a duty of care framework for online services used by Australians.

The brief outlines the significance and value in legislating an overarching, systems-based Digital Duty of Care to respond to risks to online safety, respect the rights of Australians, and support long-term public value in the digital environment. It outlines two models for the design of an effective and systemic statutory Digital Duty of Care.

The research has found that existing platform transparency measures focused on aggregated data are insufficient to illuminate the algorithmic systems that shape users’ online experiences. The paper calls for:

• legal and technical infrastructure to enable users
• regulators and civil society to meaningfully monitor and observe platform behaviour
• the establishment of a dedicated national platform observatory with the mandate and resourcing to track how algorithmic systems target and curate content for Australians
• the collation of necessary information to assess platform compliance with the Digital Duty of Care.