This era of big tech exceptionalism has got to end: Australian eSafety Commissioner
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Loading... - Gwen Hebert
- 25 May 2022
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Much like how car manufacturers had to be forced to implement safety features such as seat belts, Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant believes social platforms and tech giants need to be guided by international standards.
"What we're saying is this era of technological exceptionalism has got to end," Inman Grant said on a panel at the World Economic Forum on Monday.
"We've got food safety standards, we've got consumer protection laws, we need the companies assessing their risks and then building the potential protections in as a forethought, rather than an afterthought ... embedding those digital seatbelts and erecting those digital guardrails."
As the world hurtles towards a future that could include augmented reality, metaverses, and other different realities, Inman Grant said such experiences could be supercharged, and that also includes when users are harmed in such environments.
"If we don't learn the lessons of the web 2.0 world, and start designing for the governance and safety by design, and security and privacy for the metaverse world -- I mean, what could possibly go wrong with full sensory haptic suits, hyper-realistic experiences, and teledildonics all coming together in the metaverse?" the commissioner said.
"If there's no accountability and no transparency, we're kind of ignoring that human malfeasance will always exist, and so, how are we going to remediate harm?"
Taking a wider view, Inman Grant said as the world gets more polarised and binary, a new balancing of rights may occur.
"I think we're going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online -- from freedom of speech, to the freedom to be free from online violence, or the right of data protection, to the right to child dignity."
Inman Grant earlier told the forum that freedom of speech does not equate into a total free-for-all, and her agency had seen success in getting harmful content taken down.
"Just this week, I issued about AU$4.5 million to a number of sites mostly based in the United States that are hosting the Buffalo manifesto and the gore material." Read More…
