Poll finds fears over how personal information used by digital media giants, as well as strong support for raising rate of Newstart

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Australians are overwhelmingly concerned about the power of Google and Facebook and want them held to account for the proliferation of fake news online, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.

The survey of more than 1,000 voters has also found strong support for tighter regulation of the digital media giants, as the government prepares to crack down on the sector following an 18-month digital platforms inquiry undertaken by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Eighty per cent of those surveyed reported that they were concerned about how Facebook and Google collected and used personal information, while 75% of participants agreed that the platforms were responsible for distributing deliberately misleading and harmful news stories.

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Only 31% of people said they were not interested in how the tech giants used personal data to target advertisements when using the sites.

Support for a specialist body to oversee the operations of Facebook and Google was 75%, while 80% agreed with the more general principle that there needed to be “tighter regulation”.

Older Australians expressed the strongest support for cracking down on the sector, with almost 9o% of those aged over 55 backing better regulations, compared with 76% of those aged 18 to 54.

The finding comes after the ACCC’s final report, released last week, made 23 recommendations to better regulate the dominant tech giants, with the Coalition agreeing to the recommendation to establish a new regulating division that will investigate, monitor and enforce issues of monopoly power and breaches of privacy law.

It will consider its position with regard to the other 22 recommendations and report back by the end of the year.

According to the report, 19.2 million Australians use Google every month, 17.6 million use YouTube (owned by Google), 17.3 million use Facebook and 11.2 million use Facebook-owned Instagram.

Voter concern about the proliferation of fake news on social media comes after Labor raised concerns with Facebook about a death tax misinformation campaign in the lead-up to the May federal election. But despite the circulation of false information, Facebook told the Labor party it had no role to remove content that one side of a political debate “considers to be false”.

The communications minister, Paul Fletcher, has expressed sympathy with Facebook, telling Guardian Australia that the social media giant does not hold itself out as a traditional media publisher with editorial standards.

Amid growing concern about the power and influence of Google and Facebook, the ACCC recommended that digital platforms implement a code of conduct to govern how they handle complaints about the spread of inaccurate information, which would be registered and enforced by an independent regulator such as the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The Essential poll, undertaken from 1-5 August, also gauged voter support for the current rate of Newstart, with almost 60% of people believing the Newstart benefit of about $280 a week was too low for a single person with no children.

About 30% said they thought the amount was “about right” while 5% said it was too high.

Two-thirds of Labor voters were concerned that the Newstart benefit was too low, compared with about 50% of Coalition voters.

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When asked about lifting the rate from $280 to $355 a week, 75% of people were in favour, with Greens and Labor voters more likely to strongly support an increase to Newstart (63% and 55%) than Coalition voters (29%).

Amid growing calls from the the Greens, Labor, welfare and business groups – and from government MPs – for the rate to be changed the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has ruled out raising Newstart beyond the usual indexation levels, saying his focus is on finding jobs for the unemployed.

But while Morrison has criticised advocates for what he said was “unfunded empathy” for Newstart recipients, the Essential survey found that almost three-quarters of people believe politicians are “out of touch”.

The poll finds that low-income earners are most concerned about the current payment, with 68% saying it is too low compared with mid and high-income earners (55% and 51% respectively).

Both Labor and Coalition voters said they would prefer the government prioritise spending on Newstart over “a tax cut for Australia’s top income earners”.