Meta, formerly known as Facebook, hopes that industry codes for blocking harmful online content that were rejected by the eSafety Commissioner may be made public. Although the draft codes were not published when they were rejected, Meta’s head of Australian public policy, Josh Machin, told a parliamentary inquiry that the company had “always been an advocate for transparency” and would support their release.
The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, took a request to make the draft codes public on notice for response at a later time. She said that a public debate about how the platforms moderate class 1A and 1B harmful content would risk “creating a blueprint for weaponisation.” Grant did not detail all the “areas of concern” that she advised the eight industry associations to address in their resubmissions when rejecting their draft codes earlier this month.
She referred to her report from last December naming and shaming companies that had failed to deploy available technologies for blocking child abuse material, and said that platforms were doing “shockingly little” to detect it. The eSafety Commissioner intends to resolve the matter in March.
Meta’s head of Australian public policy said that Meta supported making the draft codes public so that people could see what companies would already be proposing. He noted that it was not Meta’s decision to release the codes, but the company thought there would be a lot of benefit in the public debate. eSafety acting chief operating officer Toby Dagg said that Meta was “one of many industry members involved in the construction of the codes,” so they would have to take some more soundings before they came to a review as to whether or not there was broad consensus within the industry.
Because of the range of sectors involved, code development involves a number of individual industry bodies, including the Business Software Alliance, the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, the Communications Alliance, the Consumer Electronics Suppliers Association, the Digital Industry Group, and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association.
When rejecting the draft codes, Grant said that The Online Safety Act 2021 enabled her to register them independently if the associations’ commitments to moderating the harmful content fell short. She intended to have the matter resolved in March. The eSafety Commissioner advised the eight industry associations to address the “areas of concern” in their resubmissions, but did not provide specific details. She said that the codes’ release would risk creating a blueprint for weaponisation and that they respected their confidentiality through the process to help them get to an outcome that met the appropriate community safeguards. The eSafety Commissioner has taken another question on notice on whether it would revise its position on withholding the codes now that Meta has supported publishing them.
