Senate inquiry to probe big technology’s influence on children, consumers

Some of the world’s largest companies including Apple, Amazon and Facebook and Instagram owner Meta will come under the microscope of a parliamentary inquiry into big technology that will have a particular focus on corporate power and advertising targeting children.

The Senate inquiry, approved unopposed on Monday, has been charged with looking into questions such as whether companies have too much influence on public debate, the success of recent efforts to rein them in and whether they have accumulated unfair market power.

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, who has had a focus on technology since entering parliament in 2019, will chair the inquiry, which will be conducted by the economics references committee.

Labor’s Jess Walsh, the Greens’ Nick McKim, Liberal Dean Smith and the Nationals’ Matt Canavan will also be on the inquiry.

“Technology has delivered great benefits to Australians,” Bragg said. “However, we must have the policy settings to protect users and ensure that Australians are not being exploited by possibly the strongest corporations in history.”

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The technology industry is already facing a long-running inquiry into similar issues by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Regulators around the world have also probed the same points.

Earlier this month The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age revealed the Home Affairs Department was reviewing alleged data harvesting by social media video service TikTok, owned by ByteDance, and the Chinese mega-app WeChat.

For its part, major technology companies have disputed their critics’ attacks.

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