The damage is already done for most people who already use it. Whenever I go to a restaurant and see friends, families, and couples together, I feel sad that instead of talking to each other, they’re all watching TikToks or reels. On a bus or train, barely one or two people are actually doing something other than watching something online.
At least, hopefully, this rule helps future generations. People’s brains are so addicted that they can’t even focus for 10 minutes straight. On top of that, I see moms giving their toddlers mobile phones while they eat or whenever they need to get something done. People should really start considering how social media affects us in the long term.
show comments
blfr
Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them? The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.
Maybe giving people what they want is not great for them. I am ok with this argument. But then "giving people control" won't change anything. Vast majority of users would rather put up with shocking (to me) levels of annoyance and expense just not to configure/fix anything themselves.
show comments
vintagedave
> Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day.
Aussie here. Great to see this. I don't think this goes far enough: I'd like to see addictive algorithms, content, and doomscrolling banned entirely. Not an option to see a different feed. Illegal. It's manipulative, hurts people, hurts children: make it illegal.
show comments
armchairhacker
I’d prefer similar to Doctorow, that governments simply make scraping and republishing (anything that anyone who consents can access) explicitly legal, then alternate frontends may appear with their own algorithms.
show comments
wewewedxfgdf
In 2023 the Australian Prime Minister Albanese was asked by Neil Mitchell on 3AW radio what he would do if he was "Dictator for a Day".
Brilliant! I really hope they get it through, and I’ll be interested to see what impact it has on screen time app sales in the region.
fmajid
It's unclear whether this legislation will require giving users the choice of the sort order. That's one of the tricks exploitative social networks use, selective prioritization of ragebait and other content that encourages "engagement". If you have the choice of strict chronological order, that removes a lot of the hold the networks have over you.
agnishom
I read the first sentence and thought: what is the government of Albania doing in Australia?
show comments
King-Aaron
I don't think this goes nearly far enough, and is another example of our government latching onto a juicy trending topic and doing the bare minimum to make a positive sounding news byte out of. This should be an opt-in model for algorithmically driven content, infinite scrolling, etc. An opt out model just feels like they're compromising for the benefit of industry lobbyists on the issue.
show comments
pizzly
Wouldn't the better way be is to make social media open? i.e. anyone can generate their own algorithm or chose from others who created them. I see that the social media companies could implement these requirements in the worse possible way to ensure that they opt right back in to "choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm"
demibabs
Right direction to move in, but probably won’t do much.
“Drug dealers are now required to give their customers the option to purchase salad instead of cocaine”.
show comments
rambambram
With RSS I already do feeds my way.
show comments
shubhamjain
I talked about this in my blog post [1]. I didn't expect regulators to pay attention to the issue anytime soon—let alone move against it. So kudos to the Australian government. Enough with the free-speech and free-market rhetoric: algorithmic feeds are actively poisoning our minds and should be regulated as strictly as possible.
> The issue is that much of the problematic content doesn’t violate any law but still is poison that shouldn’t be on anyone’s feed. The easiest example is painting feminism as some evil propaganda against men, and how women’s place in the kitchen is natural order of things. Such views have gained steam in the recent times purely because of social media (algorithms).
> The ideal regulation would be to ban or heavily regulate algorithmic feeds. If you don’t follow someone, or a page, or an interest, there’s no reason for you to get that stuff on your timeline. Only things that should be shown is what you explicitly choose. And if it does, it should be easy enough to nuke it from your timeline.
>> 1K organic users in the last three months, ,with no marketing budget, and no VC funding.
- Chronological feed of local posts + external RSS feeds in one place
- Email newsletters / RSS
- Journaling feature
- Book log / reviews
- No Algorithms
- No like button
Opensource if you want to spin up your own instance.
show comments
ricardobayes
That's great however after seeing their feed being empty people will switch back. You can already do this on youtube by not allowing history.
show comments
repeekad
This reminds me of the YouTube creator Technology Connections trying to engage with people on bluesky, which already provides feed customization and even lets you write code to build your own feed algorithms. He loosely coined the term "algorithmic complacency" to explain how users didn't like bluesky specifically because they had to explicitly choose who or what they wanted to follow, his fear being that especially young people would rather be served slop than decide for themselves what content they want to see.
This is a pro-consumer action. Good for Australia.
Identity verification is anti-consumer. Instagram in Australia offers either ID or video selfie to prove you are over 16.
gitowiec
"The Albanese Government is taking the next step following its world leading social media age ban to ensure Australians have more choice online...." - Me thinking "What the heck? What Albanese government has to do with Australians? Are they under the occupation? Albanian occupation?!"
RobotToaster
The feed options sound good in principle, although I expect the implementation to be deliberately hobbled. I've tried Facebook's existing (well hidden) chronological feed and it turns out there's so much spam in local groups that I found it unusable.
The bigger issue is the toxic "papers please" identity verification will result in a lot fewer "Australians" on the internet, who will now show up from various VPN endpoint countries, so presumably won't get the algorithm option.
jiaosdjf
4chan doesn't use any manipulative algorithms and all its feeds are time based, just saying.
Oddly, 4chan is also the only place where 2 extremely opposed sides can and regularly do interact and debate - even if a large proportion of that traffic is bot farms.
latexr
> Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm. Alternatively, users can opt out of personally recommended content in their default feed and see the friends and creators they choose to follow.
Does that mean they are giving platforms the choice of what’s going to be the default? That doesn’t seem like a wise plan.
pknerd
for a moment, I thought the Albanese Administration was promoting RSS feeds.
quotemstr
This is going to get about 0% uptake. People's preferences, as revealed by their behavior, align with the algorithmic feeds. That's the whole point of an algorithmic feed.
petesergeant
I think this is a nice idea, but three koala dollars says that in a year we find out most Australians switched back to the dopamine feed after a day or two. Nice to have the choice, though.
show comments
alex1138
With Facebook, people reported not being able to see their spouses' posts. They were "Married" on Facebook, but the feed just shoved things into their faces they didn't want. It would even edit posts when you went to their pages (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719)
aussieguy1234
I reckon a good idea would be to force Bluesky levels of feed customization, with a choice of blocklists.
Theres alot of stuff turning up in my feeds lately that i'd rather not see.
wyager
Interesting scenarios that could happen in next few years
* American internet companies start to make the judgement that supporting EU/ANZ countries with difficult legal/tax requirements is a net cost and stop doing it, just IP-blocking those countries for the lowest legal risk
* Alternatively, American govt takes the position of "American companies don't have to follow the laws of random countries just because they accept IP packets from those countries". American companies eliminate their official business presence in onerous legal regimes but keep serving users there
* If above happens, this forces the resolution of the question "how does internet jurisdiction work across borders if USA doesn't play along", and a plausible answer is that internet messages start to be treated like physical imports and nation-level internet censorship moves under the purview of customs agencies
The globally routable internet is a very special and valuable thing, but it's a historical aberration and I suspect not very stable long-term. Even today, with the internet way more locked down than 20 years ago, it's still extremely libertarian compared to almost any other economically significant venue. In equilibrium, the state will demand its cut
The damage is already done for most people who already use it. Whenever I go to a restaurant and see friends, families, and couples together, I feel sad that instead of talking to each other, they’re all watching TikToks or reels. On a bus or train, barely one or two people are actually doing something other than watching something online.
At least, hopefully, this rule helps future generations. People’s brains are so addicted that they can’t even focus for 10 minutes straight. On top of that, I see moms giving their toddlers mobile phones while they eat or whenever they need to get something done. People should really start considering how social media affects us in the long term.
Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them? The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.
Maybe giving people what they want is not great for them. I am ok with this argument. But then "giving people control" won't change anything. Vast majority of users would rather put up with shocking (to me) levels of annoyance and expense just not to configure/fix anything themselves.
> Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day.
Aussie here. Great to see this. I don't think this goes far enough: I'd like to see addictive algorithms, content, and doomscrolling banned entirely. Not an option to see a different feed. Illegal. It's manipulative, hurts people, hurts children: make it illegal.
I’d prefer similar to Doctorow, that governments simply make scraping and republishing (anything that anyone who consents can access) explicitly legal, then alternate frontends may appear with their own algorithms.
In 2023 the Australian Prime Minister Albanese was asked by Neil Mitchell on 3AW radio what he would do if he was "Dictator for a Day".
Albanese replied: "Ban social media".
Indeed.
ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1gmakhz/anthony...
Brilliant! I really hope they get it through, and I’ll be interested to see what impact it has on screen time app sales in the region.
It's unclear whether this legislation will require giving users the choice of the sort order. That's one of the tricks exploitative social networks use, selective prioritization of ragebait and other content that encourages "engagement". If you have the choice of strict chronological order, that removes a lot of the hold the networks have over you.
I read the first sentence and thought: what is the government of Albania doing in Australia?
I don't think this goes nearly far enough, and is another example of our government latching onto a juicy trending topic and doing the bare minimum to make a positive sounding news byte out of. This should be an opt-in model for algorithmically driven content, infinite scrolling, etc. An opt out model just feels like they're compromising for the benefit of industry lobbyists on the issue.
Wouldn't the better way be is to make social media open? i.e. anyone can generate their own algorithm or chose from others who created them. I see that the social media companies could implement these requirements in the worse possible way to ensure that they opt right back in to "choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm"
Right direction to move in, but probably won’t do much.
“Drug dealers are now required to give their customers the option to purchase salad instead of cocaine”.
With RSS I already do feeds my way.
I talked about this in my blog post [1]. I didn't expect regulators to pay attention to the issue anytime soon—let alone move against it. So kudos to the Australian government. Enough with the free-speech and free-market rhetoric: algorithmic feeds are actively poisoning our minds and should be regulated as strictly as possible.
> The issue is that much of the problematic content doesn’t violate any law but still is poison that shouldn’t be on anyone’s feed. The easiest example is painting feminism as some evil propaganda against men, and how women’s place in the kitchen is natural order of things. Such views have gained steam in the recent times purely because of social media (algorithms).
> The ideal regulation would be to ban or heavily regulate algorithmic feeds. If you don’t follow someone, or a page, or an interest, there’s no reason for you to get that stuff on your timeline. Only things that should be shown is what you explicitly choose. And if it does, it should be easy enough to nuke it from your timeline.
[1]: https://shubhamjain.co/2026/02/25/algorithmic-feeds-need-to-...
Or just use https://tuhat.net,
>> 1K organic users in the last three months, ,with no marketing budget, and no VC funding.
- Chronological feed of local posts + external RSS feeds in one place
- Email newsletters / RSS
- Journaling feature
- Book log / reviews
- No Algorithms
- No like button
Opensource if you want to spin up your own instance.
That's great however after seeing their feed being empty people will switch back. You can already do this on youtube by not allowing history.
This reminds me of the YouTube creator Technology Connections trying to engage with people on bluesky, which already provides feed customization and even lets you write code to build your own feed algorithms. He loosely coined the term "algorithmic complacency" to explain how users didn't like bluesky specifically because they had to explicitly choose who or what they wanted to follow, his fear being that especially young people would rather be served slop than decide for themselves what content they want to see.
https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
This is a pro-consumer action. Good for Australia.
Identity verification is anti-consumer. Instagram in Australia offers either ID or video selfie to prove you are over 16.
"The Albanese Government is taking the next step following its world leading social media age ban to ensure Australians have more choice online...." - Me thinking "What the heck? What Albanese government has to do with Australians? Are they under the occupation? Albanian occupation?!"
The feed options sound good in principle, although I expect the implementation to be deliberately hobbled. I've tried Facebook's existing (well hidden) chronological feed and it turns out there's so much spam in local groups that I found it unusable.
The bigger issue is the toxic "papers please" identity verification will result in a lot fewer "Australians" on the internet, who will now show up from various VPN endpoint countries, so presumably won't get the algorithm option.
4chan doesn't use any manipulative algorithms and all its feeds are time based, just saying.
Oddly, 4chan is also the only place where 2 extremely opposed sides can and regularly do interact and debate - even if a large proportion of that traffic is bot farms.
> Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm. Alternatively, users can opt out of personally recommended content in their default feed and see the friends and creators they choose to follow.
Does that mean they are giving platforms the choice of what’s going to be the default? That doesn’t seem like a wise plan.
for a moment, I thought the Albanese Administration was promoting RSS feeds.
This is going to get about 0% uptake. People's preferences, as revealed by their behavior, align with the algorithmic feeds. That's the whole point of an algorithmic feed.
I think this is a nice idea, but three koala dollars says that in a year we find out most Australians switched back to the dopamine feed after a day or two. Nice to have the choice, though.
With Facebook, people reported not being able to see their spouses' posts. They were "Married" on Facebook, but the feed just shoved things into their faces they didn't want. It would even edit posts when you went to their pages (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719)
I reckon a good idea would be to force Bluesky levels of feed customization, with a choice of blocklists.
Theres alot of stuff turning up in my feeds lately that i'd rather not see.
Interesting scenarios that could happen in next few years
* American internet companies start to make the judgement that supporting EU/ANZ countries with difficult legal/tax requirements is a net cost and stop doing it, just IP-blocking those countries for the lowest legal risk
* Alternatively, American govt takes the position of "American companies don't have to follow the laws of random countries just because they accept IP packets from those countries". American companies eliminate their official business presence in onerous legal regimes but keep serving users there
* If above happens, this forces the resolution of the question "how does internet jurisdiction work across borders if USA doesn't play along", and a plausible answer is that internet messages start to be treated like physical imports and nation-level internet censorship moves under the purview of customs agencies
The globally routable internet is a very special and valuable thing, but it's a historical aberration and I suspect not very stable long-term. Even today, with the internet way more locked down than 20 years ago, it's still extremely libertarian compared to almost any other economically significant venue. In equilibrium, the state will demand its cut