Local tech industry groups have lodged a set of revised online safety codes designed to protect children from exposure to pornography and age-inappropriate content after earlier drafts were knocked back.
All eight of the proposed adult content codes were rejected in April, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant revealed on Wednesday, prompting a rewrite of the codes by groups like DIGI and the Comms Alliance.
The final draft codes were submitted for review on Tuesday and will now undergo review, before a decision that could see the online safety regulator develop its own industry standards where it is not satisfied.
The codes, which will apply to social media and search giants, as well as app stores and other hosting service providers, represent the second phase of a process that has already resulted in codes and standards for child sexual exploitation and pro-terror material.
They were originally submitted to the eSafety Commissioner in February and March, with DIGI’s policy and regulatory affairs director Jennifer Duxbury commenting at the time that they were the result of an “intense sector-wide effort”.
“…We have worked collaboratively with eSafety and stakeholders to design practical, scalable solutions that include age assurance for certain content to prevent underage access… to further enhance online protections for children,” she said in March.
But Ms Inman Grant on Wednesday said the codes “did not provide sufficient safeguards for different forms of pornography and violent material” or “sufficiently address harms relating to AI chatbot and companion services simulating sexualised interactions”.
“The earlier draft codes placed the onus for safety largely on parents and carers, requiring them to enable protections for children online which should be on by default,” she said on Wednesday.
The eSafety Commissioner also took issue with the “concerning absence of age assurance measures across key codes,” even as the government continues its own trials on the viability of such verification technology.
“This means that we couldn’t be confident that the default safety protections proposed for children under the codes would actually be applied to children and protect them from accessing harmful content,” she said.
Similar concerns were raised in response to “multiple previous drafts of the codes”, including the version released for public consultation in October, the eSafety Commissioner said.
New expectations around filtering, blurring and block online pornography and other age-inappropriate content by default for children were among the measures contained in the drafts circulated for consultation.
The Office of the eSafety Commissioner will now review the final draft codes against the Online Safety Act, before making a decision on whether they meet the statutory requirements.
If Ms Inman Grant does not approve of the final drafts codes, her office will begin work on developing and registering its own enforceable standards, in consultation with the public.
For the first phase of the online safety codes, the eSafety Commissioner rejected six of the eight final draft codes. One of the two standards mandated that tech giants are to scan and remove child sexual abuse material from cloud storage services.
Elon Musk’s X reportedly launched legal action in the Federal Court this week to seek an exemption from the Relevant Electronic Services Standard, which will come into effect next month.
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