Labour MP drafts alternative plan for Internet regulation

Sunday, 10 August 2025

Reuben Davidson says a ban on under 16s accessing social media wouldn’t address the root problem.

Labour broadcasting and media spokesperson Reuben Davidson has drafted a law change that would introduce perhaps the toughest controls yet on social media, if implemented.

A key clause is that social media platforms, internet search firms and other “designated providers” would need to take all reasonable steps to minimise the provision of “harmful material” on their services and all reasonable steps to prevent its access by people under 16.

Harmful material is defined broadly in the draft bill as material that deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty or violence “in such a manner that the availability of the material on a provider’s service is likely to be injurious to the public good”.

Davidson’s private member’s bill has not at this point been drawn out of Parliament’s famous “biscuit tin” for debate so Labour’s caucus has not yet considered whether they would support it, and it appears highly unlikely to be adopted by the Government.

However, it may signal the direction in which the Opposition would like regulations to evolve in future.

The draft bill would place obligations on designated providers to design services with their potential access by children high in mind, for example when deploying algorithms to serve up content, and on conducting “risk assessments” of their services.

Internet safety campaigners have created what a library where the shelves have been restocked with all the harmful content children can already access at the swipe of a finger online.

It envisages the regime would be managed by the Commerce Commission, which would be able to seek fines of up to $50,000 for non-compliance.

Davidson has released the draft bill at a time when the coalition Government is grappling with the issue of whether to follow Australia in proposing a narrower ban on children setting up social media profiles.

National Party MP Catherine Wedd has drafted a private member's bill that would ban social media firms letting under 16s set up accounts, while Parliament’s Education and Workforce select committee has set up a parallel inquiry into the harm social media poses to young people.

Davidson said a problem with Wedd’s approach was there were a few things social media access usefully provided to young people and a ban wouldn’t address the harm that could happen in the online environment, “just restrict access until you are 16”.

“Platforms should have a responsibility to make sure those spaces are safe, and that should start with their design and also involve transparency and reporting,” he said.

The proliferation of suggestions to tackle online harm also comes as controversy rages in Britain over its Online Safety Act, which places obligations on online platforms to prevent people accessing illegal material and to protect children from “age-inappropriate” content.

Andrew Cushen, who manages a self-regulatory and sternly critiqued voluntary scheme set up by internet companies to address public concerns about their services, believed the breadth of Davidson’s proposals would create challenges.

“This and any number of the other legislative ideas that are out there at the moment — and I'm counting up to about four even in our own Parliament — are coming from a space of ‘how do we manage these harms?’.

“That’s always going to be useful, but the challenge is that ‘harm’, unfortunately, is often subjective,” he said.

“The Christchurch Call did a really good job of building an international consensus around what some of these terms can mean. But we're talking about really tricky definitional areas to take legislative consequences upon.”

New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs consulted in 2023 on a mandatory code of conduct designed to reduce online ills, in what was perhaps the most comprehensive effort to more tightly regulate internet content here, to date.

The centrepiece of that initiative would have been a new regulator, at arms-length from the Government, that would have had the power to fine large social media and internet-based content platforms for breaching rules designed to tackle harmful content.

Media firms would have had to abide by mandatory codes of practice also overseen by the new regulator, replacing self-regulatory schemes such as those run by the Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

Internal Affairs’ policy manager at the time, Suzanne Doig, said a social media code could include rules “for responsible and transparent design of ranking algorithms like Facebook’s Newsfeed”.

“Consumers could see more warning labels and content advisories, and there could be changes to the way algorithms recommend content so that harmful content is not actively pushed to users.”

However, the policy initiative was not formally backed by the then Labour government and further work on it was abandoned by the coalition government last year.

The department explained that regulatory reform on the scale proposed by its “Safer Online Services and Media Platforms” discussion paper was not a ministerial priority for Minister of Internal Affairs, Brooke van Velden.

Davidson last week headed to the United States, where he had meetings planned with Meta, Google, online game platform Roblox and Microsoft “to look at what is it that they're doing”.

“I'm sure they'll assure me it's enough,” he said.