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  • 2022-12-13 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Australia Enact a 'Social Credit System' for Internet Access? (en)
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  • In mid-December 2022, assertions that the Australian government had — or had planned to — introduce a social credit system requiring people to access the internet via your digital ID went viral. These claims mixed proposed-but-never-enacted legislation in Australia with language long associated with digital ID conspiracy theories. One iteration of this claim on Twitter asserted that access to the internet would require users to produce identifying documents to social media companies: A similar claim, also on Twitter, asserted similar examples of purported government overreach by Australia in the social media space: Despite claiming to depict a recent or current development, both of these viral tweets were based on the same video of an April 1, 2021, broadcast by the the news program 9 News Australia: That segment specifically discussed a recommendation — one of many — made by the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs as part of an inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence. Among other things, that committee's report, released the same day as the 9 News Australia broadcast, made these policy recommendations: These recommendations were never included in any subsequent Australian social media or internet legislation. A bill that passed both chambers of the Australian parliament and signed into law in September 2021 did provide Australian law enforcement with new forms of warrants capable of gathering information on digital crimes. But this legislation did not place new requirements on the tech industry and did not concern the newly enacted position of eSafety Commissioner. The reference in the viral claim about social credit appears meant to invoke comparisons to dystopian science fiction and/or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2014, the CCP introduced plans for a social credit system that tracked individuals' moral behavior along with more commonly understood concepts involved in financial credit. As described in the MIT Technology Review in 2022: Digital identity legislation, and the concept of a digital ID in general, has been a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists, as Snopes discussed in a June 2020 article about the ID2020 coalition. The language used in the viral tweets appears to target those audiences. The evidence cited to support allegations that Australia is requiring social media companies to hold onto identifying information, and in some cases transmit it to law enforcement, stems from an out-of-date television news segment discussing legislative proposals that never advanced. As such, claims that the Australian government introduced a social credit system requiring people to access the internet via your digital ID are False. (en)
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