Meta supports publishing industry draft codes

Meta is hoping that industry codes for blocking harmful online material that were recently rejected by the eSafety Commissioner might be made public.

The draft codes were not published when they were rejected, but Meta's head of Australian public policy Josh Machin told a parliamentary inquiry yesterday that the company had "always been an advocate for transparency" and would support their release.

“Obviously it’s not our decision but we think there would be a lot of benefit in the public debate in putting the codes out there, so people can see what companies would already be proposing,” Machin said.

At last week’s senate estimates, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant took a request to make the draft codes public on notice - that is, for response at a later time.

Grant said a public debate about how the platforms moderate class 1A and 1B harmful content would risk “creating a blueprint for weaponisation.” 

“We need to make sure that we're demonstrating procedural fairness,” she said.

“It’s really helping them get to an outcome that meets those appropriate community safeguards. These go directly to their reputation and their regulatory responsibilities, and so there are some sensitivities.

“I would just want to note that that is primarily why we respect their confidentiality through these processes.”

Grant did not detail all the “areas of concern” that she advised the eight industry associations to address in their resubmissions when rejecting their draft codes earlier this month. 

However, at last week’s senate estimates, Grant said platforms were doing “shockingly little” to detect child abuse material and referenced her report from last December naming and shaming which companies had failed to deploy available technologies for blocking the abhorent material. 

Yesterday, eSafety took another question on notice on whether it would revise its position on withholding the codes now that Meta had supported publishing them. 

eSafety acting chief operating officer Toby Dagg said Meta was “one of many industry members involved in the construction of the codes…so we'll have to take some more soundings before we come to a review as to whether or not there's broad consensus within industry.”

Because of the range of sectors involved, code development involves a number of individual industry bodies, including the Business Software Alliance, the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, the Communications Alliance, the Consumer Electronics Suppliers Association, the Digital Industry Group, and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association.

When rejecting the draft codes, Grant said that The Online Safety Act 2021 enabled her to register them independently if the associations' commitments to moderating the harmful content fell short.

She intended to have the matter resolved in March.