‘Pervasive and deadly’: Federal government to consider a ban on choking porn

The federal government will consider banning porn which depicts choking after a 16-year-old girl died in Sydney in a suspected case of strangulation during sex.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said the government was “seriously looking” at replicating laws introduced in the UK last year which criminalised both possession and publication of images depicting strangulation and suffocation.

“There is something wrong with a situation where 60 per cent of young people say they’ve experienced strangulation during sexual encounters,” she told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday.

Her comments follow the death of a 16-year-old girl in Sydney’s northern beaches area early last week in a suspected case of strangulation during what is believed to have been consensual sex.

Plibersek said the government would also consider allowing users to opt in or opt out of social media algorithms to help limit the amount of misogynistic or violent content users are exposed to.

“If you set up a social media account as a young boy in Australia today, it takes an average of 23 minutes for you to be fed misogynistic [or] violent content online,” she said.

“It is pervasive and widespread and deadly, and it’s being spread to our young people and normalised ... That is a deliberate decision of the social media companies.”

Consent campaigner Chanel Contos has been calling on the government to introduce an opt-in feature for social media algorithms so users can decide whether they want their feeds to be curated by an algorithm.

Plibersek also said the government was closely monitoring additional restrictions introduced by Meta as part of a landmark $24 billion settlement in the US.

Meta, which denied wrongdoing, was accused of fuelling the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children. In settling, Meta agreed to add child safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction, including adding daily time limits, eliminating notifications during school hours and adding “age-appropriate” content controls including blocking beauty filters.

The reforms may form part of the government’s Digital Duty of Care, which will legally require tech companies and online services to proactively protect users from foreseeable online harms.

The National Cabinet has also agreed to fund a review into the current consent and respectful relationships program in schools, with the government working with Teach Us Consent, founded by Chanel Contos, to teach young people that pornography is not real life.

Education Minister Jason Clare said the review was needed after two groups of private school boys were charged over separate alleged incidents of gang rape.

“We need to make sure the message is getting through,” he told the Daily Telegraph.