Last week, I published a piece in TDA’s Culture Newsletter about the online hate campaign against a specialty bookstore in Melbourne.

For those who missed it: The store was vandalised and its owners were subjected to death threats. This came after two conservative content creators posted takedown videos about the business over its policy to only stock authors of colour.

As part of my research for the piece, I discovered that Australia’s internet safety watchdog, eSafety, already has a program designed to help adult victims of cyber abuse. As it turned out, the owners of the bookstore had tried to use this scheme, only to receive no response as the tirade intensified. 

It all comes as the Government continues efforts to legislate a Digital Duty of Care, aimed at creating a safer online environment.

So, in today’s newsletter, we’re going to dig into how Australia’s internet safety laws work, and whether they’re falling short.

eSafety is Australia’s independent online safety regulator, led by Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

The Commissioner launched the Adult Cyber Abuse Scheme in January 2022, billing it as a world first. Under the scheme, eSafety can order a platform to remove abusive material, usually within 24 hours of a formal notice.

To qualify, the material must be intended to cause serious harm and be menacing, harassing or offensive in all the circumstances. The legal threshold for adult cyber abuse remains extremely high under current laws due to concerns over censorship and freedom of speech.

eSafety’s own annual report says only about 10% of the 3,643 adult cyber abuse complaints it received in 2024-25 met this threshold.

The initiative is also only a takedown scheme, not a protection order – meaning eSafety has powers to remove a post, but it can’t stop someone posting again, or take pre-emptive action. 

Last week, I spent hours talking to eSafety, trying to understand why two small business owners facing online threats to their physical and mental safety didn’t warrant intervention.

Ultimately, they told me they couldn’t comment on specific cases, but pointed to the high legal threshold for adult cyber abuse. They also noted that eSafety processes complaints from individuals, not businesses.

To get a better understanding of how these powers are working for other everyday Aussies, I put a call out on TDA’s Instagram stories. Some responded saying they’d had good experiences with eSafety, like 26-year-old Steph. Her private images and messages were sent to almost all of her contacts after her social media accounts were hacked.  

“This incident was reported to the police, who were sympathetic but basically said they couldn’t do anything,” she said. “The eSafety Commission responded to my report within a couple of hours and had all my social media accounts locked down very quickly.”

Others told me eSafety had responded swiftly to cases of online abuse directed at children. (eSafety has greater powers to intervene when personal privacy is impacted, and the threshold for child cyberbullying is much lower than it is for adults.)

However, several others reached out to tell me they’d heard nothing back after filing an adult cyber abuse claim with eSafety.

One of those people was Mitch Brown, the former AFL player who made history last year when he came out as the league’s first-ever openly bisexual player in an interview with TDA.

Brown told me he’d been subjected to “the most vile horrendous things, death threats and more,” on social media, yet received no response from either eSafety or the Victoria Police cybercrime report website.

“There is like zero accountability out here now,” he said.

On Thursday, the Government introduced its Digital Duty of Care Bill to Parliament. You’ve probably heard a lot about this bill by now, and how it’s set to change the way we use social media algorithms.

But what matters for victims of adult cyber abuse is the fine print of this legislation. The bill tweaks how the existing scheme works in three ways:

First, it shortens the waiting game. Right now, a victim generally has to complain to the platform first and wait up to 48 hours before eSafety could step in and issue a removal notice. The bill proposes to cut that to 24 hours. 

Second, it makes it easier to go straight to eSafety. Currently, you have to prove you tried to get the platform to take down the harmful content first. Under the bill, eSafety could step in where a platform has no working or accessible complaints process, or where making someone go through it would risk further harm.

Third, it targets repeat posting. If eSafety has already ordered something removed and it gets reposted, even in an altered form such as a screenshot or cropped copy, eSafety can issue a new notice without a fresh complaint. 

All three changes were recommended by a 2024 statutory review of the Online Safety Act. The same review also recommended lowering the threshold for adult cyber abuse. 

In its current form, the Digital Duty of Care Bill doesn’t do that. Instead, the bill puts the onus on platforms to prevent “seriously harmful material and conduct” from turning up in the first place. How that will work is still unclear.

The Coalition opposes the bill, so Labor will need the support of the Greens to pass its legislation in the Senate. The Greens want the Government to amend its proposal to include tougher penalties and a right for individuals to sue. Communications Minister Anika Wells says she’s considering that last point.

For now, the bill has been sent to a Senate inquiry, due to report before the end of the year. 

Independent Senator Fatima Payman has been trying to broaden who qualifies for the scheme. In March, she introduced a private bill to change the threshold for adult cyber abuse by implementing a recommendation from the 2024 statutory review of the Online Safety Act. It was not passed.

She told TDA the Digital Duty of Care “could potentially remedy some of the issues we are seeing with social media and tech companies operating with impunity,” but cautioned the new powers could result in the “suppression of political expression”.

Regardless, many of the proposed reforms won’t kick in until 12 months after the bill becomes law, so for now, recourse for victims of adult cyber abuse remains limited. 

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