What the algorithm sees

Regulating the online world

Is being able to watch a violent attack by a knife-wielding man on an Orthodox Bishop a necessary act of free speech? Does it follow that the decision whether we should be able to view such material should be made by a lone Commissioner making the decision on our behalf?¹

What occurs to me in all this debate² is that it is another example of the way in which digitised information exposes the fact that the presumptions of the analogue world no longer stand as self-evident.

I don’t agree with the conclusions in this piece by Alice Dawkins, executive director of Reset.Tech Australia, but this section is well put. She is speaking about the act under which the eSafety Commissioner currently operates and the proposed Online Safety Bill:

The act and the bill share elements of an increasingly outdated approach to digital platform regulation, where well-meaning policymakers have carried across principles from traditional broadcasting to digital media distribution that cannot scale, burden the wron…