Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has opened the door to a debate over freedom of speech as his government considers age gating a wide range of misogynistic content spread online.
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But cyber security expert and Australia's inaugural eSafety Commissioner Alastair MacGibbon has cast doubt on the capabilities of age assurance technology.
Mr Albanese announced after Wednesday's national cabinet meeting that the government would trial age-verification technology and ban "the creation and non-consensual distribution of deep-fake pornography".
On Thursday morning he said that, along with violent pornography, "a range of material" that parents would not want their children exposed - and which was "damaging to them" - could be restricted.
"This isn't free speech, to promote hatred and violence and misogyny," the Prime Minister told ABC Radio National.
"We need to have that debate as a society as well."
"I don't want to advertise one particular fellow who has become quite famous for his misogynistic, violent promotion of imagery internationally," Mr Albanese said.
The comment is believed to be in reference to the nororious incel ["involuntary celibate"] influencer Andrew Tate, whose social media and paywalled subscriber content has been found by researchers to be driving sexism and misogyny in Australian classrooms.
"One of the tragedies of course, is that the way the algorithms work is that it's not like a young person has to go searching for this, sometimes its material searching for them," the Prime Minister said.
"And that is a very dangerous circumstance. It is something that is raised with me by parents, probably more than any other issue, and it's accelerated over a period of time, since my son was young."
Mr MacGibbon, Chief Strategy Officer at CyberCX, said while the technology existed to verify people's ages online, it was not foolproof.
"Is it possible to verify a person's likely age? Yes. Do I think people could get around that technology? Of course, and that's my biggest view," he told Radio National.
"But look, I think inaction in this modern environment has led us to the place that we are now which is a terrible place of complete lack of control on the internet."
Mr MacGibbon cautiously backed the age assurance trial, while saying other measures the government is pursuing - such as criminalising non-consenual deep fake porn and doxxing - could have more of an impact.
Mr Albanese said misogynistic content was "shaping young minds and what is normal" in a way that "has a devastating impact on young people", but particularly girls and young women.
"It also is denigrating the nature of our relationships," he said.
A new phase of the federal government's Stop it at the Start campaign, aimed at countering misogynistic messaging online, will begin in mid-June.