The Coalition is betting that people mistrust Albanese more than big tech

September 11, 2026 — 5:03am

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Of course we’re talking about censorship. It could be no other way when a government tries to regulate the internet. We saw it a couple of years ago when the Albanese government tried to pass laws to deal with online misinformation and disinformation. We’re seeing it this week as it tries to take on the social media companies’ algorithms.

In the former case, the government ultimately abandoned the cause. In this case, I can’t imagine any such backdown. But the debate will take a very familiar shape: the government legislating in an extremely tricky area with the stated aim of preventing harm, opposition parties accusing it of trying to remake the internet in its political image.

There are some genuine free-speech issues at play here. There are also some red herrings. That’s because the Albanese government’s bill is trying to do two quite separate things.

One, to give social media users the ability to opt out of the algorithm that feeds them suggested content. Two, to stem the torrents of what it calls “seriously harmful” online content that has people veering off into extremist misogyny or being led into having eating disorders. The objection of censorship is meaningful to the second, but it’s totally irrelevant to the first. The problem is that it’s being used to reject the whole lot. And I suspect that’s going to create a political problem down the track, especially for the Coalition, which has now officially declared it opposes the legislation.

To force social media companies to let their users switch off their algorithm doesn’t stop anyone saying or publishing anything. It........

© The Sydney Morning Herald