WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Australia’s Digital Duty of Care bill will ban anonymous social media accounts.
OUR VERDICT
False. The bill does not ban anonymous accounts.
AAP FACTCHECK - Proposals to tighten online safety laws in Australia are sparking false claims that the government is banning anonymous social media accounts.
The claims stem from a misinterpretation of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026, which proposes various amendments to Australia's Online Safety Act 2021.
A section of the draft bill states that approved researchers will be allowed to use false identities to examine how social media platforms operate.
However, the draft bill, which was released for public consultation on September 8, does not include any measures that outlaw anonymous accounts.
The false claim appeared in a September 8 Facebook post that said the Labor government "will ban anonymous accounts unless they have government permission to be anonymous".
The post includes a clip from an Instagram video in which a man discusses a section of the bill that relates to research accounts with false identities, known in the bill as "sock puppet identities".
"... if you read between the lines here, where it says an approved researcher may assume a sock puppet identity, meaning any anonymous account out there that isn't approved by the government to be that anonymous account or a sock puppet account, I'm sorry, you're gone," the man in the video says.
"That's what this says. You have to be approved by the government to be an anonymous account."
The claim refers to division three of the draft legislation, which says approved researchers and the eSafety Commissioner may adopt sock puppet identities to conduct online safety research (page 62).
Subsection 205K of the bill states that legitimate uses of approved sock puppet identities include creating and using accounts, "observing, downloading or making a record" of online material, engaging with online services and service providers, and testing the features of an online service (p63).
In addition, subsection 205J authorises the eSafety Commissioner to use sock puppet identities "to generate material using an online service (including by means of artificial intelligence)", as long as that activity is not prohibited by existing laws (p63).
Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication at the Queensland University of Technology, said the claim that the bill's 'sock puppet' provisions would ban all anonymous social media accounts was a "fundamental misreading" of the legislation.
"The provision as designed is about protecting the use of assumed identities for research and regulatory scrutiny, not outlawing anonymity for ordinary Australians," Prof Angus told AAP FactCheck.
"It is intended to prevent platforms from simply shutting down legitimate research accounts because they use assumed identities or otherwise breach platform terms of service in the course of approved research."
Prof Angus said platforms had been able to prohibit this kind of anonymous research through their terms of service, and researchers have had their accounts suspended or blocked while undertaking legitimate public-interest research.
"Independent researchers need to be able to test platforms as they actually operate. If platforms know which accounts belong to researchers, there is always a risk that those accounts receive different treatment," he said.
Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University, said it would remain up to social media platforms to allow or disallow anonymous accounts.
"The sock puppet section legitimises and protects certain uses of accounts run with false identity information in order to test features and protections that digital platforms claim to have put in place," Prof Leaver told AAP FactCheck.
It was up to social media companies to decide whether anonymous accounts were otherwise restricted on their platforms via their terms of use.
"Nothing in the Digital Duty of Care amendment changes that, except in specific circumstances where the eSafety Commissioner and authorised researchers are specifically protected," he said.
AAP FactCheck is an accredited member of the International Fact-Checking Network. To keep up with our latest fact checks, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, BlueSky, TikTok and YouTube.
