Source : Perth Now news
American state governments are looking into their own version of Australia’s social media ban, despite resistance from tech companies, former prime minister Kevin Rudd says.
Dr Rudd hosted a fireside chat in New York with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Asia Society, a think tank which the former Labor leader how serves as the chief executive.
The conversation took place on the final day of Mr Albanese’s trip to the US to speak before world leaders at the United Nations.
The 45-minute discussion centred on a range of topics, including the OpenAI hack of a Medicare website, Australia’s role in the Pacific as well as the rollout of Australia’s social media ban for under 16s.
Australia was the first country in the world to put in place a social media ban in December, with more than 20 countries enacting similar proposals.
Dr Rudd said several state governments in the US had also been looking at the reforms out of Australia.
“The feedback I have got from American state governments is that they’re all pushing for this,” he told the audience.
“The social media ban is interesting because I remember when I was (Australian ambassador to the US), I was being whacked around the head by a number of the platform companies, saying this is going to be terrible and we’ll see the collapse of Western civilisation and Western capitalism.
“It doesn’t seem to have happened.”
Dr Rudd served as Australian ambassador from 2023 until he stepped down earlier in 2026.
Mr Albanese told his predecessor it was reassuring other countries had followed Australia’s lead in cracking down on social media.
“The fact is some of these big companies know more about a 15-year-old who’s online and on social media than perhaps their parents do,” he said.
“We acted, we were the first. It was seen as a radical thing to do … we said it wouldn’t be perfect and it hasn’t been.”
In the nine months since the ban has come into effect, more than six million accounts have been blocked.
Mr Albanese said parents had also become empowered to have conversations with their children about the impacts of social media following the ban’s implementation.
The prime minister again pushed back on concerns that looming social media reforms to allow users to opt out of an algorithmic feed amounted to censorship.
A draft proposal of the reform was unveiled in September, which would also require social media platforms to keep users safe online.
“This is about giving people the power … to control whether they want … someone or a system in Silicon Valley to decide what they see, or whether they get to decide what they see,” he said.
