ADM+S submission highlights opportunities to strengthen Australia’s Digital Duty of Care
Author ADM+S Centre
Date 23 September 2026
ADM+S has made a submission on Australia’s proposed Digital Duty of Care, calling for flexible regulation, greater user agency and stronger researcher access to platform data to support evidence-based approaches to online safety.
These proposed new laws would place greater responsibility on digital service providers to provide a safe online environment, setting minimum standards for the features and tools they use.
“The digital duty of care will ensure online service providers – including some of the most powerful companies in the world – step up and do more to keep Australians safe from harm on their platforms,” said Minister for Communications Anika Wells
The Australian Government released the exposure draft of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 on 8 September, with feedback due by 22 September.
The Government’s Office of Impact Analysis has said Australia’s existing online safety framework has delivered important protections but has not kept pace with rapid changes in the online environment. Its analysis points to a shift towards a more proactive, systems-based approach, including greater responsibility for online services to identify and manage risks.
The ADM+S submission draws on the Centre’s extensive research and experience in leading data-driven research into personalisation on platforms and technology regulation.
The submission focuses on three key areas:
- Retaining flexibility in the draft legislation and how it can be used effectively
- Making targeted minor revisions to the duty itself would improve its operation
- Strengthening provisions that provide researchers with access to platform data
The submission argues that researcher data access is critical to ensuring the Digital Duty of Care and user empowerment measures are informed by evidence, as well as the experiences, perspectives and needs of diverse Australians.
“The Digital Duty of Care (Pt 2) and provisions on transparency (Pt 12A) and researcher data access (Pt 14) are a welcome shift from a previous piecemeal rules,” the report states.
“This shift reflects the need for a more proactive and systemic approach to ensuring a safer online environment, additional protection for children, but also individual user agency and empowerment, as well as an appropriate balance of flexibility, democratic oversight and practical mechanisms to enable better coordination between industry, regulators, researchers, civil society and users to address current and emerging harms and technological capabilities.”
Recommendations
The ADM+S submission recommends that platforms establish accessible libraries of advertising and other content, alongside standard processes for researchers to view some data. These measures would help researchers monitor content trends, identify questions for deeper investigation and eliminate the need for piecemeal data requests.
It suggests Australian users be given the ability to download and contribute their own platform data to public-interest research, including both their inputs and the outputs they receive from platforms.
This type of participant-centred data is particularly important for research into individual experiences in a hyperpersonalised online environment, and for understanding the effectiveness of user empowerment tools.
It also recommends rules for research data access should allow collaboration with international researchers, where led by Australian researchers with appropriate ethics protocols and data governance within Australian universities.
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) has made a submission on the Australian Government’s proposed Digital Duty of Care, highlighting the importance of flexible regulation, user agency and access to platform data for independent research.
This ensures researchers draw on best-practice internationally for data collection and analysis, promotes Australian participation in globally leading research, and enables investigation of global online harms and networks.
The ADM+S submission strongly supports the Australian Internet Observatory (AIO) submission which calls for continued funding for national research infrastructure that enables academic researchers from across the whole Australian university sector to do this research, and to support regulators, civil society and industry in providing rigorous evidence and analysis that will underpin the effectiveness of the digital duty of care.
Authors: Christine Parker, Daniel Angus, Jean Burgess, Nicholas Carah, Henry Fraser, James Meese, Lucinda Nelson, Madeleine Stirling, Julian Thomas, and Kimberlee Weatherall.
