Australia is a medium-sized state only, and a “technology taker” in global terms. Yet in two major decisions it has strongly regulated social media consumption, requiring internet giants to compensate domestic media firms for re-using their copy and banning social media use for people younger than 16. Patrick Dunleavy and Max Halupka argue that Australia’s experiences hold lessons for other nation states to grasp the nettle of public interest regulation.
The conventional wisdom of much recent regulatory scholarship has been that where national governments confront aggressive industrial interests organised at global scale, their clout is demonstrably underwhelming. This would explain the “wild west” character of early internet development and the continuing lack of public interest regulation of giant platform corporations like Meta, Google, X, Tik Tok, etc.
On this view, governments need to match the scale of the global firms and be able to impose meaningful sanctions on them, before they can hope to be anything more than small “technology takers” in world markets. For instance, scale-matching has worked better in allowing the EU to drive strong bargains with the platform corporations.
With a population of 27.5 million (54th in the world), but a wealthy economy with GDP rated 14th worldwide, Australia is not scale-matched with the social media giants. Yet when its political elites have been able to unite most of the country, on two occasions they pushed through first-in-the-world moves to force the companies into line.
In 2021, a right-wing government (with Labour backing) bulldozed the likes of Google and Facebook into either making good on pledges to withdraw services from Australia or compensate the domestic press and media corporations for the stories and content that they reused on their platforms, for the first time. And in late 2024 the Australian Parliament passed into law a statute that makes it illegal for anyone in the country aged under 16 to use social media. These radical steps have some encouraging lessons for other medium-sized states on how to act on pressing social ills that the companies refuse to address, if only a measure of political consensus can be achieved.
Digital platforms’ bargaining code
In many countries the media industry has complained for years that their expensively produced content has been appropriated and relayed free of charge by Google, Facebook, and Microsoft internet platform companies (but not Apple). Despite the findings of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission against them, the platform firms argued that domestic media outlets gained immeasurably from the free publicity they got from content being reproduced online where millions of readers and viewers could reach it.
In 2020 the right-wing Liberal-National Coalition’s ministers lost patience and mandated the application of a News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code (NMBC). It required the big internet platform companies to voluntarily negotiate a (non-public) agreement with each of the news outlets whose content they reproduced. If the companies refused to comply then the government would itself conduct a mandatory arbitration process between the platform companies and media outlets, and compel payments. The bill was backed by Labour.
In response, Google Australia at first said that “the bill was ‘untenable’ and the company would discontinue access to its search engine within Australia if the NMBC was enacted without changes”, according to Wikipedia, 2023a. The company then backed off and complied when it became law. Facebook (the dominant site in Australia then) went further. When the bill became law, they cut all Australian news coverage from FB and Messenger. PM Scott McDonald declared, “Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing”, which re-echoed around the world. Within a few days, Facebook also caved in and negotiated deals.
Was this a win for democracy? Critics might argue that of course Australia’s highly concentrated and politically powerful media barons stiffened the backbone of politicians and public opinion. So, was this just a domestic capital faction winning against global capital?.
No young people on social media
The same could not be said of a second example. At the end of November, a bill introduced by Labor PM Anthony Albanese and backed by the Liberal and National parties passed all its legislative stages in record-quick time. Its central effect is to ban anyone aged under 16 from accessing social media sites. The bill imposed an obligation on Meta, Google, Tik Tok, Messenger, X and now Blue Sky and any other companies in the field to verify the ages of their customers.
The details of how this is to be implemented remain to be established with the companies before the bill comes into force in January 2026. This promises to be tricky, with firms perhaps having to age-verify all their Aussie users. But with 70 per cent backing from voters and an election due by May 2025, neither of the top two parties was able to ignore a public campaign from worried parents launched by the Sydney-based Daily Telegraph.
Critics argue that the ban is just the latest manifestation of conventional Australian politicians’ hostility to social media scrutiny of their actions and extraordinary hankering after a long-lost dream of Aussie kids at play face to face. The ban may have democracy implications too, as discussed in our new book:
“Young people (aged 18–34) are increasingly using social media as their preferred means of communication, entertainment and news, but children still at school (aged 12–18) are more dependent on traditional means of political socialisation […] Yet this situation may transition fast on their leaving home or starting work. If the Australian government and political elites view social media platforms only in restrictive and hostile terms, focusing on their control and censorship alone, they risk not engaging with the scope of young people’s developing political attitudes”.
Despite the difficulties no doubt to come, Australian political elites have proved willing to take a crucial extra step in simplifying policy choices, cutting the Gordian knot of platform company foot-dragging to implement much-needed reform.
Conclusions
Australia has always had a strong state tradition of governance, such as when it banned almost all inward international travel and much inter-state travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, its willingness to act against the internet giants is not an isolated case. It also contrasts acutely with the UK government’s repeated and overtly pusillanimous inability to grasp any nettles if X’s Musk or Facebook’s Zuckerberg merely hint at dissent. Normal-sized nation states (like the UK, which is more than twice Australia’s size) are key markets for the platform and social media companies. Australia’s example shows that they need to construct enough political consensus to secure the gains from stronger regulations that their voters have consistently demanded and so far been denied.
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- This blog post is based on Australia’s Evolving Democracy: A New Democratic Audit, edited by Mark Evans, Patrick Dunleavy and John Phillimore (LSE Press, December 2024).
- The post represents the views of the author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
- Featured image provided by Shutterstock
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