US raises ‘serious concerns’ about Australia’s digital duty of care regime

New York: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dismissed the US government’s public criticism of his plans to overhaul social media algorithms and regulate perceived harmful content, putting him at loggerheads with United States President Donald Trump.

The Trump administration issued a scathing statement on Tuesday afternoon (AEST), arguing the attempt to tackle social media harm announced earlier this month would likely to result in censorship and would disproportionately hit American companies.

Speaking to reporters in Manhattan, Albanese said he would not back away from prosecuting Australia’s interests.

“The digital duty of care is something that we’ve foreshadowed for some period of time,” he said.

“It’s not about giving government control; it’s about giving people back control over what they receive on their devices, which is why it is framed in that way.”

The US is particularly concerned by “potential mandates that would allow regulators to impose rigid, one-size-fits-all platform design requirements - such as forced chronological feeds or opt-in recommendation systems”.

It requested the Albanese government “withdraw any plans to mandate that platforms algorithmically suppress content based on ambiguous government-defined safety criteria”.

Issued by the US embassy in Canberra , the American response to the bill’s exposure draft came just as Albanese is in New York to speak at the United Nations, where he spruiked on Australia’s leadership in technology regulation.

In his speech to the UN, Trump also rejected what he called a “globalist scheme” to regulate AI – which Australia has joined – and said the US would officially rename artificial intelligence to “super intelligence” in a bid to rehabilitate the concept’s image.

Albanese said there’s a recognition that technology could bring enormous benefits, but the internationally community needed to “make sure that humans are in control.”

Albanese did not answer a question on whether he would refer to the technology as “super intelligence” instead of artificial intelligence, a push Trump has made to rehabilitate the concept’s image.

On the duty of care, the Trump administration has asked Australia to clarify how it would determine what constituted online harm, warning that vague definitions risked becoming a mechanism for “viewpoint-based censorship”.

Platforms were likely to over-moderate speech to avoid penalties of up to $109 million, the US concluded, leading to censorship of controversial views.

“Such a framework also risks reducing the reach of independent journalists or other voices whose content touches on sensitive or controversial topics that platforms may preemptively demote to comply with overbroad safety mandates,” the US government said.