Australia: Social Media Algorithms

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The Government completely agree with my noble friend that users should have greater control over their online experiences. We have committed to taking steps for 16 and 17 year-olds that go further than Australia’s proposal and Meta’s commitments by switching off teenagers’ personalised feeds by default. Services will also have to use highly effective age assurance to enforce this. The Online Safety Act’s user-empowerment duties will come into force next year and will allow users of the largest platforms to control what content they see in their feeds. Ofcom is currently consulting on this measure. In addition, we committed earlier this year to building on these duties to give users greater control over their algorithms.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that the burden for safety should be with the platform rather than the user? She made reference to the Online Safety Act in terms of tackling algorithms in this way. Why has not Ofcom used those powers?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We have been really clear that the Online Safety Act is not the end of the road for online safety, and we had the Secretary of State’s announcement earlier this week. The Secretary of State has met the new chair of Ofcom to reinforce the importance of robust enforcement of the Online Safety Act. The Government have also asked Ofcom to publish a clear enforcement strategy and report to Parliament on progress. As the noble Baroness will be aware, it has significant enforcement powers and launches investigations, but we are trying to work with it to make sure that these are used as effectively as possible.