Social media companies have no ‘moral lens’: Dutton

Peter Dutton has used his apperance on a popular podcast to say that tech giants, like Facebook, ‘gave us the middle finger’ when the former government sought to curb child exploitation material.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has made an appearance on a popular podcast, Diving Deep. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Peter Dutton says tech giants like Facebook “basically gave us the middle finger” when the former government sought to curb the boom in child exploitation material online, describing the experience as “a real eye opener” that has informed his policy for under 16s to be banned from social media platforms.

The Opposition Leader, who was home affairs minister when the Australian Centre to Child Exploitation was set up, said it had become clear to him that social media platforms saw users as young as 14 as nothing more than a “revenue model”.

“That (centre) was concentrated on trying to stop pedophile networks from distributing graphic content and children being sexually abused,” Mr Dutton told the Diving Deep podcast.

“When we dealt with the companies at that stage, with Facebook and Meta and others, they basically just gave us the middle finger and said that we’re not going to help you in stopping that information being distributed between theses networks.

“It was a real eye opener to me at the time because I just thought they’d have the same moral lens as anyone in the corporate world. And what it said to me at the time and what has been reinforced since is they just see a 14-year-old as a revenue model and I just don’t think we can accept a model that has a different set of laws and arrangements in the real world to what it is online.”

The Coalition started calling for under 16s to be banned from social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and X for most of the year before Labor announced it would adopt the same policy.

An age verification trial is now underway, with live testing of teenagers with different technologies that could block access to take place in coming months.

Social media companies face new restrictions in Australia. Picture: Supplied

Some advocates, including those from the disability sector, have raised concern with the world-first ban, which they warn could isolate young people who rely on the social media platforms for connection.

However, Mr Dutton said he envisaged the tech giants creating separate and safer platforms for young people, allowing them to still have access to social media but with limits around what they can see.

“There’s a lot of harm that’s been done and a huge rise in mental health issues in Australia … I think social media has a real case to answer here,” Mr Dutton said.

“For some kids under 16 it’s a real torture.”

However, he said other legislation aiming to reduce harm done online, specifically Labor’s misinformation bill, was ill-conceived and needed to be firmly off the agenda at the next election.

“I don’t know whether the government will take it to the next election but I hope they’ve heard the message pretty clearly that there’s not support for it across the community,” he said.

The negative impact of social media has been a prominent issue more broadly in recent months, with concerns around the facilitation of anti-Semitism in particular.

The Coalition has called for under 16s to be banned from social media platforms..

Mr Dutton revealed he had Jewish friends who were considering going back to Israel, because they felt it would be safer than Australia.

“Israel is under threat from a nuclear power in Iran … but they still feel they would be safer going back to Israel,” he said.

“It really breaks my heart because I just don’t think we’d treat any other part of our community like that, not the Indian community, not the Chinese community not Catholics, not Protestants, not atheists.”

Ahead of an expected reshuffle within the Coalition in coming weeks, Mr Dutton said there were people on the backbench who “well and truly deserve to be on the frontbench” but that there was little jostling for position in comparison to the post-Howard era.

“Sometimes people can be advancing their own causes, but over the last two and a half years, there’s a common purpose that everyone is signing up to, people aren’t playing games or trying to reposition,” he said.

“People are right to have ambition, there are some very well credentialed colleagues and others who are on the backbench and who well and truly deserve to be on the frontbench.

“But when we lost government after John Howard lost, we were in this internal conflict and we were at war with each other and it was just not productive. We are at the polar opposite of that now.”