Kate Reader joins Amy-Rose Goodey on The House is Digital for a conversation on digital platforms, competition and the growing influence of global technology companies within Australia’s economy.
As General Manager of the Digital Platforms Branch at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Kate discusses how large digital platforms have become critical infrastructure for consumers, businesses and online markets.
The discussion explores app marketplaces, search engines, advertising systems and platform dominance, alongside the challenges regulators face as digital services become increasingly embedded in everyday life and commerce.
This episode was recorded at the Independent Reserve podcast studio, and we greatly appreciate their ongoing support of The House is Digital.
speaker-1: The House’s digital podcast is where Australia’s tech future takes shape. Welcome to the frontline of Australia’s digital revolution. Kate Reader, welcome to the Houses Digital podcast. You’re the general manager of the digital platforms branch at the ACCC. You’ve been at the ACCC since 2017 and you’ve been across the work of apps, digital marketplaces, competition. Is there a lesson early on in the piece that Australia has learnt from our evolution in the digital world.
speaker-0: Thanks very much for having me. It’s always a pleasure to come and talk about these issues to people who are interested in them. ⁓ I think one of the main structural insights is that over the last couple of years, these large global platforms have really become critical to the Australian economy and they’re interwoven in our lives every day. ⁓ And they get to that place by becoming ⁓ unavoidable intermediaries between consumers and between small businesses. It’s a common theme of a of the reports we’ve done over the last couple of years. So for example, we looked at search services. So Google search, as you know, like most small businesses can’t function without being found on Google. So it’s a way for consumers to actually find services as well. So it’s kind of critical ⁓ to the way that the internet operates. And Google, of course, is a verb, to Google something, ⁓ which shows just how important they’ve become to Australian society and to Australian consumers. and to small business. ⁓ When we looked at advertising services, for example, so Google dominates the ad tech supply chain, ⁓ no other provider has the type of or reach that they do, and they are a critical trading partner for advertisers who look to place ads, and also for content creators and publishers who need somewhere to earn money, and so they need ads on their services in order to do so. ⁓ Our second report looked at app marketplaces. As a lot of people will know, there’s only sort of two operating systems, two major operating systems I should say, which is the Apple operating system and Google Android. Most people who have a phone have one or two of those. Australians will be very familiar with what happens when you have one or two small or large companies who dominate in terms of pricing and behaviour. The control of those operating systems gives Apple and Google control over the distribution of apps, which is how lot of consumers find and buy services. these days ⁓ and it controls it’s basically a key gateway for both businesses and consumers to reach each other. ⁓ So the critical positions that they hold in these markets really have changed the way in which consumers and businesses operate in the economy. ⁓ When large platforms dominate particular markets ⁓ they often have a certain number of economic characteristics. These include strong network effects and economies of scale that benefit basically attracting more users ⁓ and expanding their ecosystems or sort of interrelated products and services. And then it’s often hard for consumers to switch or there’s a certain amount of consumer inertia. ⁓ There’s costs associated with switching as anyone who’s tried to switch between mobile systems will know. ⁓ And defaults on services often influence consumer behaviour. So for example, when you buy a phone, often a certain number of apps are there by default for you to use. ⁓ And often, for example, the search engine is loaded by default and so consumers may not, for example, go and look for another search engine, they may just use the one that’s provided to them on the phone. These obligations or observations about how markets work have not only been made by the ACCC but also a large number of other G7 countries and also by the OECD ⁓ who have looked at digital markets across the last couple of years and increasingly a lot of jurisdictions and competition and consumer authorities are looking more towards these issues particularly as we move into AI.
speaker-1: Is there, we’re moving like a freight train into a digital world. Is there some specific or some really big differences between how digital platforms run and physical platforms between those two industries? Those two.
speaker-0: So I think the answer is yes and no. So ⁓ many economic characteristics, sort of I’ve just described like network effects and consumer inertia, ⁓ they also exist sort of in the normal sort of traditional markets, if you like, physical markets. ⁓ But the combination of those in digital markets is particularly powerful and also quite unique. So in traditional markets, significant market power may allow dominant firms to increase prices. So for example, if you only have one market participant in a market supplying a service, they might charge you whatever they think they can get away with because there’s no one else in the market to constrain them. ⁓ Many digital platform services are provided at ⁓ no monetary cost, so you pay with your time and attention and also with your data. ⁓ So what can happen there is that ⁓ platforms will degrade the service over time that you receive or they’ll collect even more data. ⁓ So colloquially, ⁓ this is known as ⁓ instantification. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that on the podcast, but it’s a popular phrase used to describe that phenomenon. ⁓ And a lot of consumers will recognise that on a lot of the social media services they use, for example, they’re seeing more and more ads, they’re seeing less and less content from family and friends, for example, and they’re having more and more data collected about them or data that’s now being used, for example, ⁓ as part of AI.
speaker-1: next time.
speaker-0: to train various different models. So yes and no. Some of these things do exist in traditional markets, but it’s the combination of these in digital markets that makes it particularly powerful and challenging.
speaker-1: You have spent a great deal of time in reports and actually the ACCC reports on digital platforms are the go-to for government and industry. So you’ve examined search engines, social media, app stores, digital advertising. Where do you think the biggest risks in competition sit at the
speaker-0: I think so the last couple of years have really seen a change in the way we think about these issues and I don’t think it’s controversial anymore to say that a handful of firms have extremely strong market power in things like search engines, Google which we’ve talked about, ⁓ social media in Australia, Meta has some of the largest ⁓ platforms with Facebook and Instagram, app stores which of course ⁓ Google has an app store and so does Apple as I’ve discussed. digital marketing. ⁓ This means not only a lack of competition in these core markets, but potential threats to competition and innovation in downstream. Obviously, for people like Apple and Google who control operating systems on the phone, that then controls who gets on the phone and what type of terms and conditions apply to apps being loaded on the phone and how they’re reviewed, for example. And it’s the reason why governments around the world are introducing ex-ante competition regimes for digital platforms, which are essentially sort of ⁓ codes or rules about how these large platforms should behave in relation to certain and particular things, usually based on previous studies that we’ve done, ⁓ to ensure that these dominant platforms will not act in a way that threatens contestability and competition in other markets, not only in the core markets. Dominant firms established in existing digital markets have the resources and the technology to expand their ecosystems. And we’re exactly seeing that. AI now. Some of the biggest investors in this space are Microsoft, Google, ⁓ Meta and Amazon for example. ⁓ They influence the way that technology develops and they do it in such a way that favours their own interests, which is ⁓ not a terrible thing of course, that’s logical and that’s what businesses do, ⁓ but it does have the potential to impact how competition develops and that’s what we’re really focused on. You asked about ⁓ scale and market power. ⁓ And I think ⁓ one of the interesting things here is economies of scale are present in most digital markets, ⁓ but particularly significant in things like search and app stores and mobile operating systems. And in terms of how the ACCC thinks about scale, ⁓ scale can contribute to market power. ⁓ the ACCC doesn’t think that big is automatically bad, ⁓ scale, it can certainly produce efficiencies that result in consumers paying less or getting better services or more services ⁓ or higher quality services. ⁓ But it can just deter other competitors from entering the market. Of course, you if you’re going to launch a competitive service against one of these large global platforms, ⁓ there’s a significant amount of cost and time. And also you’re fully aware that the person on the other side has infinite resources to bring against you as a new competitor and an entrant and that might make it risky for them to ⁓ challenge an incumbent platform.
speaker-1: We do in Australia, I feel like we are quite okay with our monopolised industry, with our supermarkets and our banks. Do you think that policy makers in particular understand the dominance in the digital space? Are they recognising that it is possibly becoming entrenched in digital markets? ⁓
speaker-0: I would certainly hope so. think a lot of competition agencies across the world are taking cases and putting out reports and talking to people about the position that these digital platforms have, not only in our own jurisdictions but globally. ⁓ I think the reach of these companies across the world is quite staggering when you look at the total number of users they have ⁓ and the influence they have ⁓ as a result of that. ⁓ My personal experience is certainly I think ⁓ government certainly become more alive to that in the last couple of years and is now very conscious of the impact and in fact even though it’s not in our space the social media ⁓ age restrictions are an example of a recognition that the government has made of how impactful these platforms are on a particular set of users.
speaker-1: And I think the geopolitical landscape is also impacting on how we respond to some of those bohemian digital platforms as well. You’re consulting at the moment on some proposed new competition laws. What are these reforms intending to solve? What problems?
speaker-0: It’s a very challenging environment. So their proposed laws that the ACCC has recommended are trying to prevent the kind of anti-competitive conduct from these large incumbent digital platforms. ⁓ In particular, dominant platforms can charge businesses quite steep fees ⁓ with commissions up to 30%, for example, only NAP purchases, which is often passed on to consumers. They can also preference their own products ⁓ and services above smaller competitors downstream and reducing choice innovation available to users ⁓ because they are in many cases gatekeepers ⁓ to the way for example on app stores ⁓ who they allow on their platform and the conditions they attach to that and what is approved really does dictate how competition and innovation develops so we’re keen to ensure that that you know is fair and transparent.
speaker-1: And that diversity in the market is also important too because there’s quite a control mechanism happening and that impacts on the Australian society even politically during elections too. That’s a bit of a worry. ⁓ So you’ve recently released a snapshot examining competition issues around generative AI. I’m so curious to hear about what that looks like.
speaker-0: Yeah, so we finished our last official. ⁓ So we had a direction from government for five years to look at digital markets and that ended in March 2025. ⁓ Obviously digital markets and developments didn’t end just because we handed our last report in. ⁓ So the team was and the commissioners were quite keen to continue work in this space. ⁓ so we took a couple of months to work on a snapshot looking at the development of generative AI. It’s an example of how fast the technology moves. that when the direction to the ACCC to look at digital markets was given to us at the end of 2019, AI wasn’t on the list and neither was cloud services. So it just shows like how fast the technology develops. So our AI snapshot was looking at both competition and consumer issues. And really we were looking to understand on the consumer side sort of what impacts the AI might be likely to have. ⁓ were particularly focused on three main issues in relation to competition. ⁓ So the continued rise of generative AI, which is a particular type of AI ⁓ as firms continue to release newer models. ⁓ Secondly, we looked at agentic AI, which has ⁓ recently become one of the buzzwords in AI. ⁓ And because more and more generative AI firms releasing AI agents which are capable of performing tasks with minimal prompts. From a competition perspective, are particularly interested in multi-agent systems where multiple agents work together to achieve a shared goal ⁓ and whether or not there’s risk that AI agents may do things like collude amongst agents and on the consumer side whether or not agents actually act in the best interest of the person using the agent. And we’ve seen a number of examples in the press, example, where AI agents have gone a bit rogue and done things that are not consistent with the instructions that they’ve been given. it’s a very interesting and developing space. The last thing we looked at in the snapshot was investments, acquisitions and partnerships, because as you would have seen, a lot of these large firms are investing in each other. So and there’s a lot of partnerships across the spectrum, ⁓ which is particularly interesting from a competition point of view. So we’re continuing to monitor that space.
speaker-1: That is so interesting. ⁓ we’ve already, we’ve got some big, let’s say we’ve got the big four banks. And I imagine that if they were to have their own AI agents and they went rogue. this is a bit dystopian, but they could start talking to each other and sharing data and sharing information, which is a risk to obviously the competition side, but also the customer data and consumer protection side as well.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that’s something that we’re only just starting to sort of grapple with. ⁓ The ACL, Australian Consumer Law, as we sort of like to shorten it to, ⁓ is quite a robust principles based framework, but we are sort of thinking through kind of what ⁓ new tools like agentic AI and agents will mean for how consumers are protected in that environment. ⁓ Because I think there is, ⁓ there are real risks there and we’re still thinking about what that looks like. And we’re not alone in that space. obviously ASIC, the banking ⁓ regulator is thinking about these issues as well. And as is the privacy regulator and other people as well. And I think there are a whole suite of issues. ⁓ Digital platforms have the, ⁓ or rather, unfortunately for them, ⁓ they have the spread of services that cuts across multiple regulators. So they are unfortunately of interest to many regulators, not just one, not just us. And it’s been one of the great pleasures of working in this space that we have developed really close working relationships with ⁓ the Privacy Commissioner, so the OAIC, the eSafety Commissioner who obviously works ⁓ on online digital safety ⁓ and the ACMA who’s the Media and Telecommunications Regulator as well as ASIC.
speaker-1: I think it’s absolutely necessary to have those open doors of communications at this particular time. Are there any mistakes that we’ve made in the past or mistakes that possibly we were at risk of making again?
speaker-0: ⁓ It’s always difficult to answer that question because with the benefit of hindsight you can always see things you might have done a bit differently. Look I think… we were probably a bit slow to realise the impact of these platforms. ⁓ Having said that, ⁓ it can be quite difficult to judge those things in advance. Like you don’t necessarily want to jump in to regulate something before you’re sure about what the harms look like. ⁓ But maybe we left it ⁓ a bit too late. ⁓ Yeah, look, and I think it’s
speaker-1: ⁓ with the social media,
speaker-0: Yeah, it’s easier to say with the benefit of hindsight that maybe we should have intervened ⁓ a bit earlier, I do think… ⁓ sometimes rushing to regulate, not always wise, but equally it’s difficult to sometimes foresee how those things are going to roll out. And certainly, as you would know in the tech space and the digital space, there are lots of things that are touted to be the next thing that don’t then eventuate and rushing to regulate them. ⁓ might not be, well, might turn out to be like a waste of everyone’s time in industry or like a huge waste of money. So I think there has to be that careful, careful balance there. But ⁓ I think certainly we could have realised earlier the vast impact of these platforms. And I think that’s one of the learnings to take forward from the early 2000s, like realising the impact of the digital revolution in our day-to-day lives and services now. Potentially we’re living through that same experience with AI. and what can we learn from what we experienced in the 2000s.
speaker-1: And that was a global learning experience too. This isn’t certainly not restricted to any individual government department. I think a lot of society would echo that we wish that we had done more originally and that’s why there’s this big digital detox ⁓ world emerging now. So the ACCC ⁓ is heavily involved in the National Anti-Scam Centre, actually run the National Anti-Scam Centre. What’s your role there and what’s the role of the National Anti-Scam Centre?
speaker-0: Yeah, so as you I’m sure you would appreciate scams on digital platforms are a really significant issue for consumer trust and engagement in the digital economy. ⁓ And the final sort of formal report of our inquiry direction impact sort of set out the impact of scams on or particularly on messaging apps, social media and search. ⁓ We use the ACCC uses a range of measures to disrupt scam activity that targets Australian consumers and small business. We’ve established as as you said, the NASC as we call it, the National Anti-Scam Centre ⁓ and the scams prevention framework has passed Parliament and we’re in the process of working with Treasury to develop the designation instruments as in which ⁓ industries will be designated and then the code obligations. ⁓ So the NASC which is run by the ACCC sort of brings together experts across government, law enforcement, industry and consumer groups to try and disrupt scams before they reach consumers. So we have data about trends and we share data with those parties. We try and raise consumer awareness about how to identify and avoid scams. And since 2023, we’ve been coordinating with these groups to identify and prevent scams and also to support victims. So we think the NASC really makes an important difference. There was, now I’m going to double check this, reported scams, were 3.1 billion in 2022 and that reduced to 2 billion in 2024. So that’s quite a significant reduction. But having said that, AI really brings new challenges into this space. And I think scammers will just continue to be an ongoing issue where we have to continually try and take the steps that we can to ensure that we are on top of the technology that’s used by scammers. and that we’re continuing to kind of plug the gaps where we can ⁓ because scammers have an amazing ability to detect ⁓ weaknesses and to exploit those. And AI technology is making it even easier to fool people than it did before.
speaker-1: Yeah, I’m quite concerned about scam agents, autonomous scam agents. It used to be a lot harder to roll out some of these targeting campaigns, but now it’s very, very, very easy. How much though of the scam problem is about the platforms over user behavior?
speaker-0: Yeah, so I don’t think at the ACCC we really see this as kind of an either or sort of issue. I think it’s everybody’s responsibility. ⁓ Like if we’re going to be really effective in addressing the problem, we need to look at the various different businesses that are involved in the sort of scam ecosystem. ⁓ You know, look at criminal sophistication and look at like how sophisticated the criminals are being and what tools they’re using, but also work with consumers to try and arm them with the best information that they can to protect themselves. we, National Anti-Scam Centre, places a really high priority on consumer education and is consistently developing educational material which we’re putting out on various different platforms and reaching out with various groups, ⁓ particularly vulnerable groups, to try and educate them about how to protect themselves. ⁓ As I said, AI is making this really challenging. think… ⁓ you know, a couple of years ago, we might have confidently said to people, if you, ⁓ you know, if you’re contacted in a sort of romance scam scenario, there might be some red flags, including the person might come on camera or won’t meet you. Nowadays with AI, it’s easier to fake like a video of someone that looks very convincing and real. And so some of the tips and things that we’ve used before are going to quickly become out of date. So we have to keep moving with the times to try and find new And businesses also, ⁓ banks and telcos and digital platforms need to be proactively monitoring and taking steps to protect their users because they are their users. And allowing their services to be, well not allowing, I guess having these scam services on their services just ⁓ results in reduced trust and possibly people stop using these services because they’re so worried about being scammed or they don’t believe any or they don’t accept anything that are being told to them or sent to them. And overall that just reduces the likelihood that people will engage with the digital economy, which is not what we want.
speaker-1: You can imagine that as this gets more intense ⁓ with the prolification, there’s not really anything that we can do to stop it. But are there any second order effect, I guess, that will take place because of the actions of the policy makers when we’re imposing some of these new sort of restrictions around some of the digital platforms?
speaker-0: I think flexibility is really important ⁓ as a guiding light in terms of setting obligations because I think the pace of change, ⁓ while the pace of change may not be impacting underlying market structures in the sense that these large platforms such as Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft may still be the dominant platforms in 10 years or 15 years, ⁓ the technology itself will continue to evolve over that. And so we need legislative frameworks that are flexible enough to deal with that and to ⁓ handle changes in the way both consumers interact with the services, but they’re also being misused by people like scammers.
speaker-1: So you mentioned that it’s happening fast, we have to try and keep up. Do you think that there’s a possibility that we might not be able to? Is it totally ruled out that we’re not going to be able to keep up with some of the scammers? Or do you think there could be a turning point where we are more proactive than reactive?
speaker-0: Yeah, I hope so. And I think some of the obligations in the SCAMs protection framework, which will require sort of more proactive and governance steps around these issues will help these businesses to take more proactive steps to protect consumers. And some of the things that have been introduced recently by Telcos, for example, the Sender ID, like are really helping consumers to try and protect themselves. And so I think there’s more proactive things that can be done, but it will have to evolve over time because as soon as you introduce something, they try and find another way around it. And I think it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll ever be able to confidently say that scams are solved ⁓ because ⁓ they just are so good at And scams have existed since time immemorial. ⁓ I think he’d be a bold individual who said that we were going to solve scams with a new piece of legislation. ⁓ I think as long as all the parties in the ecosystem, business, government, citizen groups, consumers themselves, are committed to trying to work and reduce the risks, then ⁓ we’ll go a long way to making Australia a harder target for scammers.
speaker-1: I’m also quite hopeful about ⁓ other technologies being used to intercept and ⁓ different identification of people ⁓ being able to be used to, I guess, lock in who that person is and what can and can’t be done with their data or their money. So that might…
speaker-0: that might be. Yeah, and digital ID will play a really important part as part of that as well. think, sort of safe and secure and privacy friendly ways of storing your identity and be able to ensure that you can provide certain services and be confident of that without sort of risking your privacy or information sort of being spread across the internet will certainly be important as a way to kind of manage risks going forward. And I think it’s an important step in all of governments ⁓ and a lot of other jurisdictions are certainly moving in that space.
speaker-1: Yeah it’s a hot topic in Australia at the moment actually.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think traditionally it’s quite hard because Australians are not, ⁓ you know, for those who’ve been around for a while, we remember Australia Card, like we’re not a massive fan of that kind of structure. I think, you know, the digital world we live in now makes it ⁓ quite a bit challenging because you do do more stuff online than you have ever done before. ⁓ Work, play, education, like a lot of stuff is online now. so ⁓ proving who you are or demonstrating who you are has become more important because you’re sort of physical in real life as my daughter would say. ⁓ Interactions maybe aren’t as much as they used to be, you’re doing more and more things online.
speaker-1: Yeah. Okay. I am going to ask you one last question. Around how people are going, we look back, when your daughter looks back or when your children look back on this decade, what do you hope Australia is going to be able to say that we did, that we achieved? and where we are now, let’s say 2030, or maybe we shouldn’t put a date on that.
speaker-0: Yeah, it’s, ⁓ look, I really hope that ⁓ Australia as a whole can say, we tried to go into this with our eyes open. ⁓ We asked questions we didn’t accept necessarily. ⁓ you know, well that can’t be done. I think we are a nation of innovators and people who are willing to take risks with technology and willing to try things. ⁓ If you look at, you know, the uptake of, rather than mobile phones or any technology, Australians are at the forefront, we’re really good at it. And so I think we should continue to kind of go into these things with a positive attitude and with our eyes open, ⁓ but also like ask questions and think, well, is this good for me? Is this good for our community? ⁓ And recognise that, you ⁓ as a nation we’re different possibly than other nations, we have different priorities and so that we have to choose what’s right for us in terms of our balance of privacy and security, competition and innovation ⁓ and that also I’m quite positive about that we can take control of our own destiny, that we can learn from the things that have gone in the past and that we can have a ⁓ sort of a competitive economy digital economy in Australia and we can protect our consumers ⁓ from the threats that are out there.
speaker-1: I’m quite confident as well. can just say good tech because tech is neutral, neither good nor bad. So I am very excited about the tools that Australia is building now to combat all of these things. Thank you so much, Kate, for joining me on the Houses Digital podcast.
speaker-0: Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
speaker-1: digital, where policy meets innovation. Stay curious, stay inspired and be part of the movement building Australia’s next economy. The future is happening now. See you in the next episode.
speaker-0: you