TL;DR
Victoria proposes “masking” powers to force platforms to identify anonymous accounts in defamation cases. It would also make it easier for families to sue platforms for harming children.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan made the announcement on Sunday The state has said it will propose legislation to the Victorian civil and administrative tribunal to give it the power to order social media and AI platforms to reveal the identities of anonymous account holders accused of online abuse. “unmasking” powers will be the first of their kind for an Australian state.Allan said families needed new ways to protect their children online.
The proposed reforms go beyond identity disclosure. Victoria will also scrap the legal threshold requiring families to prove a child suffers at least 10% permanent disability before they can sue platforms for negligence causing psychiatric harm. This threshold, assessed by doctors using standardized calculations, made it unaffordable for most families. Removing it for claims brought on behalf of minors would open a new avenue of litigation against platforms in Australian courts.
Timing is tight. Victoria has a session four weeks before the state election in November and the opposition has said the laws will not be passed in time. Shadow Attorney-General James Newbury said the Coalition supported the effort in principle, but “I don’t think Elon Musk is looking at Jacinta Allan’s statement today and shaking in his boots.” Australia’s under-16 social media ban is already struggling to be enforcedtesters found it easy to bypass age verification systems. Adding unmasking powers to a regime that cannot yet verify who is under 16 raises questions about whether the infrastructure is in place to enforce them.
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Marilyn Bromberg, an expert on social media regulation at the University of Western Australia, said the reforms “bold start” but said they need to go beyond defamation to include defamation and cyberbullying. The Australian Senate delayed amendments to the social media ban earlier this yearand the federal government is still working on an enforcement framework that will force platforms to comply. Victoria’s move adds a state-level litigation tool to the federal regulatory framework, which remains incomplete. Whether platforms respond to the threat of tribunal decisions in a single Australian state depends on whether the political signal lasts longer than the election cycle.
