Chris Hipkins isn’t hiding where Labour’s technology policy inspiration comes from.
When I spoke to him as he walked off the Ryan Bridge TODAY set yesterday, he enthusiastically confirmed the alignment with Australia’s Labor-led Government was deliberate. Win the November 7 election, and he would quickly begin discussions with the Albanese Government about progressing policy.
Borrowing the Australian playbook looks sensible. Big Tech operates across borders. Regulators working together stand a better chance against the lobbying power of the tech companies and their threats to pull their services if we regulate them.
Labour has assembled the most cohesive technology policy package of the election campaign. That doesn’t make every proposal good. But it offers something the coalition’s light-touch approach conspicuously lacks: a plan to govern the technology reshaping our lives.
A switch worth having
Start with social media. Like the National Party, Labour wants an under-16 account ban, which it would implement within 100 days of being elected. But it goes further with a “digital duty of care” provision, an independent regulator and the ability for everyone else using social media to choose a feed containing only accounts you follow. Australia has already implemented the ban and is out for public consultation on its “my feed, my way” plan.
I’m still unconvinced by the under-16 ban. The evidence so far suggests it is largely ineffective, while forcing flawed age-verification processes on the Australian public. The feed switch is a better idea.
Most of the time I simply want to see what people I deliberately follow have posted. Labour would make platforms offer that choice. Australia’s proposal requires that the off switch be easy to find, isn’t deactivated when you reopen the app, and does not leave users with a deliberately inferior experience. Yes to all of that being enshrined in policy here.
This would not reduce posting harmful content. Nor would it remove dodgy accounts people already follow. It changes distribution, not what everyone is allowed to publish.
It gives users an exit from personalised recommendations. I suspect that will be popular.
The evidence on the benefits of switching from a personalised feed to one that simply displays a chronological feed of posts from people you follow, is modest. A Facebook and Instagram experiment found reverse-chronological feeds saw people spend less time doomscrolling, reducing time spent on the platforms, which is good for us, not so much for Big Tech.
But it didn’t significantly change political polarisation during the study. Exposure to untrustworthy content actually increased. So, no, chronology won’t save democracy. Giving people control remains worthwhile without pretending it will.
AI needs more than enthusiasm
Labour’s proposed digital duty of care would make platforms responsible for identifying and addressing risks, backed by an independent watchdog. Australia introduced its own duty-of-care bill last week. This is regulatory architecture, going much further than what we currently have with Netsafe’s voluntary Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms.
The same instinct runs through Labour’s AI policy. An Office of AI would co-ordinate government policy, standards and procurement. Labour also promises human oversight of consequential public-sector decisions, stronger protections for sensitive data and a framework giving creators control and payment when AI uses their copyrighted work.
Large data centres would have to secure renewable electricity, cover connection costs and reduce demand during peak stress, which National is also proposing.
Copyright remuneration is also an idea borrowed from Australia, but would be tricky to implement. An Office of AI could become a useful co-ordinator or another bureaucratic inbox.
Still, the package of social media and AI policies represents the strongest proposals to moderate the power of Big Tech floated by politicians so far.
Light touch, light ambition
The Greens have serious proposals too, including restrictions on automated public-service decisions, an AI regulator and a stronger science investment programme. Their proposed pause on new AI data-centre consents takes them further into interventionist territory.
Other than the social media ban, which is popular with parents of every political persuasion, the coalition’s AI and digital plans remain light touch. That increasingly risks becoming a sophisticated description of doing very little.
We shouldn’t regulate technology simply because it is new. Equally, “innovation” shouldn’t be a magic word that excuses every business model, opaque decision or privacy intrusion.
Yesterday I also caught up with Samir Saran, the president of the Observer Research Foundation, India’s largest and most influential think tank. He gave a fascinating talk at the Westpac Strategic Outlook Forum on Monday and was visiting just as the NZ-India Free Trade Agreement officially began. In his book Geotechnography, Saran outlines how India has reclaimed power from Big Tech by building digital public infrastructure at a level unparalleled anywhere else in the world.
“We’ve created digital public infrastructure that is owned by the government, like a railway track, atop which we’ve allowed the private sector to build and run their solutions and businesses. As a result, there’s been a huge amount of innovation,” he writes.
It bypasses the vendor and customer lock-in that Big Tech favours, allowing Indians to control their data and authenticate their identity across a wide range of digital wallets and services. New Zealand has built a framework for a similar system here, which will soon underpin a digital driver’s licence. Advancing digital identity and verification systems that are owned and operated by governments is another key way to tackle the power of Big Tech, which holds vast amounts of information on its users.
“Changing Big Tech’s behaviour will be a long and hard process. But sustained exposure, penalties and lawsuits could shake them from their stupor,” Saran also writes in Geotechnography.
Our co-operation with Canberra could give New Zealand more regulatory leverage and less duplicated work. For a small country confronting enormous technology companies, that sounds considerably more useful than standing back and hoping the market develops a conscience.