eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant says tech giants must be more transparent

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner says tech giants must be more transparent about how their algorithms work so as to reduce online harm for users.

Australia's eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

The world’s tech giants need to be more open and transparent about how their online algorithms work to minimise harmful content that users see on their platforms, the nation’s eSafety commissioner has warned.

“I’d like to see tech companies making smarter, more just design choices that prioritise user safety over ad targeting and platform stickiness, and to bolster their AI (artificial intelligence) and human capacity in detecting and preventing a wide range of harms before they reach the target,” Julie Inman Grant told The Australian.

In January, the federal government amended the Online Safety Act to minimise cyber-bullying, requiring online platforms take appropriate steps to ensure users have a safe online experience.

Platforms must also advise the commissioner on what reasonable measures they are taking to achieve this. Ms Inman Grant said the move would help “lift the hood, so government and end users can understand the true extent of harm, company interventions and their effectiveness”.

For years, algorithms have been contentious and just last month billionaire Elon Musk told the TED 2022 conference – before he bought Twitter – that algorithms must be an “open source” and promote transparency and free speech.

“There should be an inclusive arena for free speech,” he said.

“Twitter has become the de facto town square, so it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.

“One of the things I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people’s tweets; if they are emphasised or de-emphasised, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that action has been taken, so there’s no behind-the-scenes manipulation either algorithmically or manually.”

Algorithms on sites such as Google allow users to insert a few key words into a search box to find quick and relevant results, and the most effective posts are defined by algorithms enabling them to be found easily.

Google’s senior manager of government affairs and public policy, Samantha Yorke, said the organisation had provided users with “detailed information about how search algorithms work” and what steps they are taking to provide a safer experience for citizens.

“To help ensure search algorithms meet high standards of relevance and quality, we have a rigorous process that involve both live tests and thousands of trained external search quality raters from around the world,” she said.

“These quality raters follow strict guidelines that define our goals for search algorithms and are publicly available for anyone to see.”

Google also said they were working to stop people searching “unexpected shocking results”, for instance, mistakenly coming across explicit content in their search results.

On video-sharing platform YouTube, latest figures for the March quarter show they removed 3.85 million videos for violating community guidelines.

At Facebook, a spokesman said they had been working on ensuring safety around algorithms and minimising harm to users.

“Meta (owner of Facebook) shares the commissioner’s view and that is why we are transparent about how content is ranked and recommended on our platforms and provide tools that allow people to understand why they are seeing a particular piece of content or ad,” he said.

“We also invest significantly in technology to proactively detect and remove harmful content before people see it.”