If you thought the censorship complex was bad before, wait until you see how bad it can be with Artificial Intelligence.
A new Orwellian body has sprung up that makes the 'Scary Poppins' led Thought Police look like a quaint nuisance.
And at the helm of this new body are two Karens, the kind who sat on the Lindsay Clancy trial, deciding what you're allowed to say, see, and think.
Think it's a bunch of idle hyperbole? Read on, intrepid RedState reader.
The latest battle is unfolding in Australia, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor government has unveiled sweeping new “Digital Duty of Care” legislation governing social media platforms, apps, messaging services, gaming platforms and AI chatbots.
The government describes the proposal as an online-safety regime intended to force technology companies to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms. It would also allow Australians over 16 to choose whether social-media algorithms determine what appears in their feeds. Companies that fail to comply could face penalties exceeding A$100-million.
Look closely at this woman. She wants to censor the entire global Internet with the “eSafety Minister,” who has been trying to do this for years. If their new censorship bill becomes law, these two women will be able to censor any content they say “may cause serious harm.” https://t.co/MIiOc6DdAK
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) September 10, 2026
It's another provision, however, that has generated the censorship fight. The exposure draft gives Australia's communications minister rulemaking authority over categories of “seriously harmful material.”
According to reporting on the bill, that authority includes the ability to expand the categories covered by the regime, although such regulations would be subject to parliamentary disallowance. Australian Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay has raised concerns about the breadth of that authority and called for greater transparency, consultation and parliamentary oversight.
Communications Minister Anika Wells insists the law is not intended to censor political speech. The Albanese government says it is principally aimed at material involving child sexual exploitation, violence, self-harm and other serious online harms.
But critics aren't simply taking the government's word for it. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor announced Thursday that Australia's Coalition would oppose the legislation, arguing that the ministerial discretion contained in it creates an unacceptable risk to free expression. The Australian Human Rights Commission has separately expressed concern about the “open-ended” character of the minister's authority.
“The Prime Minister wants to determine what all Australians can do, see, and say on the internet, and shut down political debate, through the proposed Digital Duty of Care. Australians should be wary of trading the algorithm for the ‘Alborithm,” said Dr. Andrew Bushnell, Director of the Law and Freedom Program at the Institute of Public Affairs.
"In November 2024, the federal government committed to introducing a Digital Duty of Care. Under the proposed law, all online service providers – not just social media platforms, but also AI tools like ChatGPT, messaging apps, app stores and everything else – will have an overarching duty to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable serious harms'," the IPR went on.
“The Digital Duty of Care is not just about social media, and it is not just about the kids – it applies across all services on the internet,” said Dr Bushnell.
“The Prime Minister is using legitimate claims about child safety as a cudgel to engage in sweeping censorship of political speech and criticism of his failing government,” he warned. “The extraordinary scope of this law makes it inherently dangerous to freedom of speech and political participation online.”
Now, where have we heard concerns about "child safety" on the Internet being used as a pretext for a speech crackdown before? Not just in the United Kingdom, but also in the context of a massive $17.1 billion lawsuit settlement against Meta.
Then there is Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who would play a major enforcement role in this Thought Police. Inman Grant has already become familiar to Americans because of her previous showdown with Elon Musk's X.
In 2024, Australia's eSafety regulator sought an order requiring X to block worldwide access to video of the stabbing of an Assyrian Christian bishop in Sydney. A federal judge declined to extend the temporary global-removal order, raising the obvious jurisdictional problem presented when one country's regulator attempts to determine what internet users everywhere else in the world may see.
The eSafety Commissioner ultimately abandoned that particular court fight. The controversy eventually reached Washington. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan later accused Inman Grant of pursuing “global takedowns,” and congressional Republicans began investigating whether foreign governments were effectively exporting their speech regulations into the United States.
That concern is no longer limited to Australia. In February, Jordan's House Judiciary Committee released a 160-page report alleging that European regulators had spent years pressuring American technology companies to change global content-moderation policies. The committee said documents obtained from the companies showed more than 100 closed-door meetings between European Commission officials and social-media platforms since 2020.
One exchange highlighted by the committee was particularly remarkable. When a European Commission vice president traveled to California in 2024 to discuss “election preparations” with TikTok, the company reportedly asked whether the Commission meant European or American elections.
“We are interested in both,” came the written response, according to the committee's report. The committee concluded that European regulators had “successfully pressured social media platforms to censor true information in the United States.” European officials and defenders of the EU's Digital Services Act dispute that characterization, arguing that the law regulates platforms operating in Europe and is designed to combat illegal content and systemic online risks rather than censor Americans.
If this all sounds familiar to American readers, there is a reason. The United States spent years fighting over remarkably similar questions during the Biden administration.
The Department of Homeland Security unveiled its Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, placing disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz at its helm. Critics promptly dubbed it a government “Ministry of Truth,” while videos of Jankowicz singing about disinformation spawned the “Scary Poppins” nickname.
The backlash was ferocious. DHS paused the board after only three weeks, Jankowicz resigned, and the project was eventually terminated. DHS maintained throughout the controversy that the board was designed to coordinate the department's existing work and was never intended to police Americans' speech.But the larger controversy didn't disappear with the board. Documents subsequently obtained by congressional investigators showed extensive communications between Biden administration officials and major technology companies over COVID-19, vaccines, elections and other purported misinformation. A 2024 House Judiciary Committee report accused the White House of coercing platforms into suppressing information, including some material that the committee said was true or did not violate the companies' existing policies.
The issue eventually reached the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri. The Fifth Circuit concluded that certain federal officials had coerced or significantly encouraged social-media companies to suppress protected speech. The Supreme Court reversed — but importantly, it did so on standing. The 6-3 majority held that the plaintiffs had not established the concrete, traceable future injury required to obtain an injunction against the government. It did not issue a definitive merits ruling approving all of the government's communications with social-media platforms.
That history helps explain why Australia's latest proposal is attracting attention in Washington. The Trump administration has made opposition to foreign regulation of American speech and technology companies an explicit policy.
In December, Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed visa restrictions on five Europeans, including former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and leaders associated with several anti-disinformation organizations. Rubio accused them of participating in efforts to “coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”
“These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states,” Rubio said, adding that the State Department was prepared to expand the list if other foreign actors did not change course.
Now Australia may be headed directly into the same dispute. Asked whether the proposed Australian rules could create problems with President Trump, Albanese wasn't backing down.
“We're a sovereign nation, we decide our policies based upon the Australian national interest,” the prime minister said. He added that his relationship with Trump remained “very good” and that he expected to see the president in New York in the coming weeks.
Washington has nevertheless fired a warning shot. A White House spokesman said the administration had “unequivocally warned” trading partners against digital-services taxes, fines and other measures directed at American technology companies, describing some such measures as “extortion.” The administration, the spokesman said, remains committed to raising those issues with America's trading partners.
That could put Albanese in an uncomfortable position. Australia and the United States reached a critical-minerals framework in 2025 involving billions of dollars in planned investment. At the same time, Canberra is moving toward a regulatory regime that could impose enormous penalties on some of America's largest technology companies.
The political fight, then, is about much more than whether Instagram should let somebody turn off an algorithm. It is about who ultimately gets to define “harm” online.
The Albanese government says its proposal is about safety rather than censorship. That is always the claim of would-be tyrants who claim they are only infringing on our rights "for our own good."
