As is common in political shenanigans, the draft bill has a euphemistic label ('algorithmic opt-out') - what it actually does is allow unspecified bureaucrats such as the Minister for Communications to designate any individual piece of content as 'harmful' and have it banished from the internet.
As an Australian who just wants relatively free access to information (and the ability to freely/easily discuss it), it's frustrating.
And it's not the first time the Australian government has done this; last year they banned U16 from social media, several weeks later everyone was alerted to Bondi by... social media.. so they could get the heck out of there, but U16... they were left clueless and unable to get updates (news sites ran 30+ minutes behind real-time events and official sites like NSW Police took 70+ minutes to even announce there was a shooter).
Thanks. Reading it at first seemed like “the people” here is you know, end users, people toggle some settings on their devices, not a government employee deciding. It turns out a government employee doing it. Yeah, just because US government is goofy doesn’t somehow make others sane or good.
"The draft laws provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps or websites, and streamline the child cyber-bulling and adult cyber abuse schemes to enable eSafety to deal more quickly with this harmful material."
> The objects of this Act are to improve and promote online safety for Australians by ... imposing a duty on persons responsible for online services to ensure a safe online environment
On special powers granted to the Minister:
> the Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine material or conduct, or a combination of material and conduct, that the Minister is satisfied may cause serious harm
Suppose government had instead banned spare car tires. 99.99% of the time, we wouldn't notice. But during an emergency the effects of such a ban become apparent. Similar with the social media ban.
Consider the situation for a 15 year-old on or nearby Bondi at the time of the attack. You hear.. fireworks?.. a car backfiring..? and meh, you continue sipping your iced matcha latte.
Sometimes having the choice to learn/see/hear information matters. Very often (like with a spare tire ban) nobody even notices the ban - but at certain times, it really matters.
Is this not a bias towards the status quo, conflating two entirely distinct problems?
We have problem A: receiving timely updates for life threatening events has not been implemented, or poorly.
Then we have problem B: social media companies have monetised engagement, without any guardrails to avoid detrimental effects, and continue to push to maximise this.
Just because the status quo involves a high speed, low latency, flood of unverified information via social media, which tangentially solves problem A in cherry-picked examples, does not mean it has to always be the case. This same proposed solution is also rife for abuse, in the same way a legitimate early warning can be sent out it can just as easily be used to spread hoax events.
Would it not make more sense to actually solve problem A, e.g. get the police to pull their finger out and use the emergency broadcast service available in just about every phone on the planet, and treat problem B as its own distinct issue? By conflating the two I don't see how we will ever solve either problem in any effective manner. By doing so we're essentially agreeing to a world where our best case scenario is the narrow intersection of A & B, while the rest of the time we're left with the full outer join of the two problems - bad access to verified emergency updates and a flood of engagement-bait crap on social media.
To be clear, I do not agree with how this legislation is being put forward nor with how it is proposed to be controlled. This is layman's legislation at its worst for a highly technical subject, and even in a more charitable light I struggle to see it as anything but a distraction and power grab rolled into one, with little likelihood of solving the problem at hand.
You can literally justify absolutely anything using that logic.
That one time the toddler reached for his daddy's unsecured rifle and killed the intruder who had a history of perpetrating violent home invasions. Therefore, don't secure your firearms.
That is the seed of a reasonable argument against securing guns - if you're expecting to have to use a gun to defend yourself, you want to have a gun and have it on hand and ready to use. If it is illegal to have the gun out of storage then that is a problem in the event of being attacked by someone.
It seems unlikely that the toddler to be using a gun effectively though.
> As is common in political shenanigans, the draft bill has a euphemistic label ('algorithmic opt-out') - what it actually does is allow unspecified bureaucrats such as the Minister for Communications to designate any individual piece of content as 'harmful' and have it banished from the internet.
Not a fan of the paternalistic/nanny state attitude of the current government or that ministers track record, but isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
> isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
Precisely. This bill is being sold to the public under a benign label, but smuggled along with it are some dubious affordances. The same was accomplished with 'age verification for U16s', which, if named correctly, would have been called 'everyone (not just U16s) must present a licence or use a VPN to use the internet'.
Can you elaborate how this might be different than laws in Germany that disallow certain speech around white supremacy? Or laws that disallow violent rhetoric?
I think censorship is bad because it restricts expression, and I believe restricting expression is bad because I believe free expression is both a human right and incredibly important to free society. But obviously, there are times when we collectively are going to agree to restrict rights to some other benefit. The question is of balance. To what degree are we restricting expression, and to what end? Is it truly justified?
I have no idea if this proposal is shit or not, I'm not steeped enough in it, but it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?" - well, the important details are literally everything else other than the part where it is censorship, so that's the part we need to address...
> it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?"
That’s not what your parent comment is saying. Asking “how do these things differ” does not imply support for either thing, it’s a request for clarification. Not every question is an argument in disguise.
Yes, merely asking how two things differ is not necessarily intended to be an argument in favor or against something. I used deduction based on context to figure out that part.
Text being low bandwidth, I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies it's unreasonable to assume that making a comparison to something that people are highly sympathetic to isn't likely to be an appeal to sympathy for the other thing being compared. I just disagree, my interpretation was completely reasonable here. If it's wrong, well, it's not like I told them to go fuck themselves. It would then merely be a misunderstanding. Though, I doubt it.
(To be honest, though, I also should say that I actually have no idea whether they would lean more for or against on the comparison. Not everyone is a fan of hate speech laws, after all.)
> I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies (…)
You are wrong. My point is closer to “don’t make assumptions; it muddies and derails the conversation and leads to unnecessary unproductive disagreements”.
Compare your original answer to a sibling response, which was made before yours.
America constantly restricts expression it doesn't like. It's just that you believe being topless in the park is bad speech but calling for genocide is good speech. Billionaires using computers to slurp up and regurgitate others work is good, but people copying others work is bad. Saying "lets kill the president" is bad, but saying "lets kill the senator" is good.
America does not have a monopoly on what good and bad speech is, and it certainly restricts speech, via legal means, via cultural means, and via application of force.
I'm not personally a big fan of all U.S. restrictions on speech, but I don't really see your point, to be honest. The U.S. can right sometimes and wrong others. In principle, I don't really see why the U.S. government and its officials generally shouldn't be able to raise concerns about legislation and litigation that may impact U.S. businesses, especially if they believe they might impact inadvertently the rights of U.S. citizens. There are plenty of examples where I believe the U.S. official or agency was spot-on.
If you are not a fan of U.S. soft power though, then it seems like the future will be brighter for you; we're certainly burning all of those bridges as fast as possible. But, that is really neither here nor there.
Not everyone wants to live in a society where the American form of limited free speech is the accepted societal norm. Australia can choose its own views, so can France, and Britain, and Turkey, and China. It's not a colony of the us.
It should be no problem to call things by their name (censorship) then.
Censorship is the government suppressing information. If people actually believe that this is how things should be, let the government introduce official “censorship bills” and call publicly for “additional censorship measures”.
The fact that they aren’t doing that demonstrates that they feel the need to hide what they are really doing, which speaks of an inherent wrongness that has nothing to do with a US/non-US culture divide.
The post did not use the name "censorship", it just tried to trivialise the democratic will of a country which does not want to give more power to US billionaires, claiming it's just the whim of an "unspecified bureaucrat"
US views on the limited freedom of speech the US government allows are different to those of the limited freedom of speech that Australia, Germany, etc allow
All those countries limit freedom of speech, it doesn't make anything that doesn't exactly copy American "freedoms" (and indeed lack of freedom) wrong.
Of course argue this and HN will flag you
The more speech you have, the more powerful you are. That means those who can have more speech and more targetted speech (i.e. people who are wealthier) are more powerful. Not everyone likes that. You might, that doesn't make you right.
"Disingenuous" implies someone is doing something on purpose. Anyone calling a Minister an unelected bureaucrat is just mistaken - obviously a minister isn't an unelected bureaucrat. They're an elected bureaucrat.
That said, whoever this Anika Wells woman is the law looks like a bad idea and it is nice that the US has found it in their interests to say something helpful.
Social media could have just as easily spread misinformation about the Bondi incident. It was a failure of the NSW Police to not use the SMS emergency warning systems, which is not a good reason to keep everyone on social media.
Yeah, nah, the Australian right has been casting pro-Palestinian speech as anti-semitic.
In the States, the right has been supportive of government suppression of speech, including the communications agency (FCC) threatening broadcasters into cancelling an interview with a politician in the opposition party. The right's free speech record is far worse in the US and Australia.
Admittedly, neither side of the aisle have good free speech practices in most of the rest of the world.
It is a super popular viewpoint in certain populations. It might not be _your_ view point, but there are may people who want exactly this. They usually won't say it out loud because they want all the support they can get.
Should I remind that Palestine is against the two state solution? What would happen with the Israelis if Palestine will be free from the river to the sea?
Both sides are damnable in this conflict, but I don't buy this idea of the gazans "just wanting peace".
It’s precisely my point. Those people will have to learn to live side, and it’s not going to happen when people are taking sides, buying into propaganda etc.
Like I said, it’s not a football game where you run around Sydney with your face painted screaming “from the river to the sea” it will solve nothing.
We have nothing to do with this war, and just because "one side invaded the other" does not make either of them right - both sides have been murdering each other over religious garbage for 100s of years
This isn't our business and we shouldn't be involved
Thinking that we, as Australians, need to get involved looks to me like "aw these poor little brown people don't know what they're doing they need a big strong white man to sort it out!"
Picking a side here isn't advocating for peace it's posturing
I did specify over religious garbage and not over this specific piece of land
Regardless, the point is we aren't "fighting for peace and freedom," we're just murdering a bunch of people in a different country over something we have nothing to do with
There's some merit to your viewpoint because Hamas was at one time democratically elected. I don't think there's a strong case for claims that the majority of Palestinian people supported the October 7th attack on either military or noncombatant targets. One being that the majority of Palestinians were not of voting age at the time.
October 7th being an illegal attack justified a military response from the Israeli Defense Forces to secure their border, and most of the world agreed. Opposition solidified when IDF conducted mass destruction of civilian structures and independent observer-corroborated systematic murder of noncombatants, many of whom were children.
While two wrongs don't make a right, it's justified to support a people who are the victims of a genocide according to credible observers.
I agree, I just don't think you can really be only "pro-palestine" because it's sort of like the same thing in reverse.
If Hamas was in-charge of the situation , what do you think would happen to Israelis, you think they'd be well looked after by Hamas?
What should be happening if we had good world leadership is Israel would be bought under control through sanctions, we'd investigate and prosecute war criminals on both sides and the world would help eliminate Hamas and Iran (because they help Russia kill people in Ukraine) and support Hamas, but yeah, not in that world.
Realistically October 7 was a huge, huge disaster for the Arabs in the region.
Your dogged equating of support for the Palestinian people with support for Hamas is elevating a minority view.
This would be like my claiming that all Liberal Party of Australia members hate aboriginals. Many do, but that is not how the majority of Liberals see it. Or a claim that all US Republicans are racist. Not sure what nationality you are, but you should get the picture.
Anyway, it's ironic because if you look at all the hate directed at Israel, you could only draw the same conclusion. People hate Israelis, even though it's largely their government doing the fighting ?
If you read that doctrine, you will see propaganda is a major part of Hamas' modus operandi, and many westerners fall for it too. It's actually amazing how many point form the 1998 charter people seem to be repeating now, in 2026.
Back to my point really, if you gave control of the area back to Hamas (because who else would run things), what do you think would happen to innocent people in Israel? If all the people who attended those protests were successful, what do you think the outcome would be ?
The Right/Republicans have always touted free speech. They love getting their hate out.
The Left have always been a bit more 'censory', generally because of their bleeding hearts on behalf of the minorities that are the targets of the Right's exercising of their free speech.
Such is my understanding. I don't really mind either stance, with the caveat that anything 'censory' has a chance of having it's definitions expanded (and admittedly, this is succumbing to the slippery slope fallacy).
> The Right/Republicans have always touted free speech.
> The Left have always been a bit more 'censory'
Not "always", and not even now. It's always contingent and situational. Same goes for nearly every clause in the Bill of Rights.
At various points the left has been associated with the fights against obscenity laws, against Cold War loyalty oaths, against blacklisting, against bans of books.
At various points the right has been associated with the fights against desecration of the American flag, against the teaching of human evolution in schools, against depictions of sex in media, against anti-war demonstrations.
The right is just as "censory" as the left with things they don't like.
But I think both "the right" and "the left" are kind of reductive and caricatures. I guess forcing you to go in a camp is one of the great woes of American politics.
> But I think both "the right" and "the left" are kind of reductive and caricatures. I guess forcing you to go in a camp is one of the great woes of American politics.
100%, it only seems to fuel the already-present tendency for tribalism.
... right wing freedom of speech is defined with a simple rule.
you're allowed to say anything you want as long as bari weiss determines that you are sufficiently zionist and wont say anything that isnt zionist enough
They're in bed with the resource and gambling sectors, and other big business.
Their record on making actual changes to benefit the people of the country vs keeping their donors sweet is pretty terrible lately. They've half-arsed so much in the last few years it's becoming a meme.
Fabians, AFAICT, pride themselves on evidence-based policy direction. That would have (for example) implied a full ban on gambling advertising as the government's own enquiry recommended, rather than whatever watered-down industry sop Albo actually pushed through.
Labor is in bed with big business, the gambling lobby and the resources sector. Ain't nothing 'left' about any of that.
The only people who think Labor are far left are those who have swallowed the ON/Wannabe-MAGA propaganda, as they try desperately to portray the mainstream as radical. The problem is that Albo's a boring, grey, middle-of-the-road, managerial type of PM so it's laughable to anyone with half a brain.
Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of problems with how Labor are going about governing, this is not an endorsement of them. But the idea they're far anything is such utter brainrot.
You got exactly what you voted for. The left is pro censorship now. From political correctness to deplatforming, to right speech to labeling things misinformation to forgetting my body my choice when Covid came along. This is the natural end of wokism.
You're getting downvoted for the factual inaccuracy of your statement. The party in control of government in the United States has gone to extraordinary lengths to chill free speech. From overt viewpoint discrimination for broadcast television to banning press outlets critical of the administration, to deporting people in legal statuses for political speech, there is no modern parallel by any other political party. The right wing's support for free speech has enormously fallen.
> "We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
Australia should put this submission in the circular file. The US government's opinion about any of this shouldn't matter to Australia, especially when the intent is to allow users to elect to use the natural state of no-algorithm time-based-ordering presentation of the content. This is like saying that an impact study needs to be done to determine if walking to the end of the block is safe enough to be allowed rather than blasting people out of a cannon towards the end of the block. Or saying that people should not be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that order if they choose to.
> Another worry was that the proposed laws could affect Australia's "reputation as a jurisdiction that enables innovation," the submission said.
How magnanimous of the US to be concerned about this for Australia.
Are you not aware that Australia is a willful participant in the wholesale abrogation of human rights, in the form of Pine Gap?
Of course the US has a say in Australian affairs when it comes to matters of human rights about censorship and access to information. Without that stranglehold, the Australian public may well inform themselves about the crimes of their state, committed every single millisecond, against close to 2 billion other human beings.
It is beyond ridiculous that Australians whines about their special relationship with the US, while doing absolutely nothing about the very criminal behavior that both states are co-partners in committing.
Australia and the United States have mutual interests and investments in the Pacific. Underlying this is a sense of shared cultural values and shared legacy as former British colonies.
To act as if the United States is sticking its nose in Australia as if it's Venezuela or something shows a rather pedestrian understanding of Australian history and geopolitics.
If the United States retreats from the world the Australian people will be among those who suffer the most. The interest in each other is mutual.
Edit: I'm not endorsing any particular intervention I'm merely pointing out the parent comment's framing (basically Australia should just ignore the United States or vice-versa) is silly given the reality of the relationship between the two countries, especially right now given how Australia views the present risks associated with the growing threat of Chinese hegemony in the Pacific.
If the US 'retreats' from Australia because Australia acts like a sovereign country and makes it's own laws as it sees fit, then Australia is better off without them.
The reality is nowhere near as stark, however. Australia can tell the US to go fuck itself over it's latest comments and nothing will likely come of it. Maybe some temporary tariffs - more punishment for US citizens and a slight dip in Australian exports. Big fucking whoop.
It will not 'ruin the relationship' to anywhere near 'retreats from Australia' levels. Australia possibly holds quite a good hand given how important Pine Gap is to US interests in that entire quadrant of the globe. Australia could probably flex on that.
Pine Gap is not a ‘good hand’, it is a shackle and we Australians are bound by its oppressive function just as negatively as are the 2 billion people whose human rights it abrogates every millisecond of the day.
The United States could retreat from the world for any reason at any time. Could be because Australia refused to be annexed, could be because the white house fridge ran out of diet coke that morning. Then donald could change his mind the next day.
Given that there's no rhyme, reason, or consistency to it, best to ignore nonsensical, provocative statements, keep calm, and carry on.
This article is conflating two things. The US response to the Digital Duty of Care law and the US response to the algorithm opt-out provision.
The US did criticize the opt out provision.
But when the US says this, its about a different provision in DDC, which says platforms need to proactively remove harmful content.
>"We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
What is an "algorithm"? Showing the 20 most recent posts is an algorithm, but I doubt that's what they're targeting with the law.
I'm not just trying to find a technical gotcha here. I think it's worth identifying what exactly about an "algorithm" causes it to cross the line and become harmful.
When does an algorithm become harmful?
When it is designed and optimized to maximize the amount of time it engages the user?
What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
What about an algorithm that maximizes the amount of ads people see? Or the amount of money that the company makes?
Most Australians dislike social media. We are underrepresented on it, and it shovels the US’s issues down our throat. The current algorithms mainly send us US political propaganda and things that are supposed to make us hate nearby Asian powers like China.
> Social media is not capable of shoveling anything down anyones throat.
This statement is manifestly untrue. The malign power of social media is precisely the reason that legislation has been introduced in Australia and elsewhere, and that Meta et al are battling and losing "addiction" lawsuits worldwide.
> What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
If only we had 20+ years of scientific and societal evidence to show that regardless of what you think is "on the surface", the effects are catastrophic to mental health, democracy, the concept of truth, and everything else.
I'm sure the final law will outline the specific details. But the intent of the law is not algorithms in a computer science definition, but modern recommendation engines.
Showing a chronological feed of accounts you have followed in this case would be non algorithmic. This is how all social media worked before the modern hellscape we are in.
To you and me it's a very wide category, and there may be hundreds or thousands or even millions involved in me simply typing this, it being saved somewhere and then served back to you.
For lay-people though, it's become a term which means "The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you". So for lay-people to want to turn off the algorithm, they tend to mean going back to "just what your friends posted, in order"
> When does an algorithm become harmful?
I think this is a research subject. AFAICT it's pretty certain now that social media 'algorithms' have been optimised for addictiveness, which is likely to overlap somewhat with what users find interesting, but also cover things they find mildly titillating and/or outrageous.
The harms come in a bunch of forms. The never-ending scrolling of bite-sized videos seems massively destructive to attention span, and people seem to get addicted to it and may neglect other parts of their life. The platforms also seem really keen to send men and boys off to pretty hateful 'manosphere' content which is apparently making life hell for women (including teachers of teenage boys). Then we have all the body-image and anxiety issues caused in teenagers constantly exposed to influencers showing off their (faked) wealth, beauty etc.
Switching off the "shoving this all in your face" part of social media seems to me to be a win. When it was actually a way to keep in touch with friends and family it was a different game.
> The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you
That (plus a clause that exempts algorithms with user controls with full informedness and ability to confidently and reliably predict the outcome = old good filters and such) is the thing that should be in the legislation’s definitions section.
But then in the actual law it’s worse than “algorithm”, they’re actually banning broad over generalizations and design patterns instead, stuff like this:
>> recommender features – content selected and displayed based on information associated with the user’s account;
(Obvious legit use cases are regional content and user preferences.)
>> endless-feed features – continuous feeds of end-user content;
(Pure design pattern, pagination can be addictive at any span size.)
Dark patterns are called that for a reason. Having to click "next page" is a point of friction that slows and stops consumption. Pageless increases engagement in an addictive way - it's why companies do it.
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue
Your claims that these specific features provide no harm are belied by our knowledge that they do.
If "recommender" algorithms were the same as "just show me what my friends posted in chronological order", then there would not be such resistance to implementing the latter.
If endless scrolling were the same as pagination, then apps optimized for addictiveness would show a roughly equal distribution of both. But they do not.
Recommender algorithms as defined aren’t just the recommender algorithms you’re thinking about. It’s merely this idea that precise definition matter, nothing more. I’m not arguing that it was a bad idea to restrict some crappy patterns, or anything like that. Just that lawmakers defined that poorly.
And endless scrolling is pagination with a page size of one and a gesture (scroll down or swipe) for the next page. And trust me, “next page” can be helluva addictive. Endless pagination is an aesthetic preference. It may make it more slicker, frictionless, more visually appealing to get addicted, sure, but it doesn’t change a thing about the core element of the addiction. Same endless feed can be easily made counter-adductive by degrading relevance past some threshold, which clearly tells me the issue is elsewhere.
It’s a good question, and it’s not well defined. I am hoping that it allows us to customise feeds more. If I have problems with body image, don’t show me topless photos. Same goes with alcohol and gambling, which some platforms do have. The answer must not be either be subjected to content you don’t want to see or don’t use social media at all.
I think the line for algorithms is anything machine learning or neural network based, not simple ordering.
Side note: When iterating on male avatars, ChatGPT incrementally increases muscular features without being prompted to do so. There are biases in these machine-learned algorithms.
Wow, no, actually the complete opposite. Algorithms are free speech but not fair speech. They let those with money or otherwise control over the algorithm to speak far louder than anyone else, giving them an unfair speech advantage, or even taking away the free speech of others by drowning them out.
We need free and fair speech, not just free speech. Everyone should have an equal voice. That means no algorithms. You get one voice, people choose to listen to you or not.
You can choose not to go to work too. Have fun doing that. Many social media apps today are essentially required to use because official announcements of all sorts are only made there.
Yours is the sort of unrealistic viewpoint often used to justify this sort of propaganda. Further, you are lying. Banning algorithms in no way prevents you personally from saying or commenting on whatever you wish. Your free speech is fully intact.
But by supporting forced algorithms on social media you are the one who wants effective censorship.
Country that is the reason that globally we can't have breasts on social media, even in completely non-sexual contexts, complains about "censorship" from a country that wants to avoid melting its childrens' brains.
Don’t get me wrong, it sucks we don’t have it, I wish we had it and I admire the US for having it.
I’m just pointing out Australian’s don’t have the ability to draw on it’s constitution to push back on government censorship which does take place in other forms.
Australia doesn't have protected speech. We're starting to see the dam break where rules that were left unexplored because it would go against the US driven view of globalization is starting to wane due to the US's loss (self destruction?) of its soft power.
Some doubt, actually. From the Guardian's reporting:
> Under the plan – dubbed “my feed, my way” – users opting out of the algorithm will see content only from individuals and groups they have actively chosen to follow.
> Users would be asked what they want their default feed to be through a pop-up message provided on their platform of choice.
So I should look forward to the day I see my Reddit feed free of r/Fauxmoi propaganda? Or does Reddit get a free pass like it has with age verification? Because we're still able to browse Reddit without an account, for starters. They had a popup that it required an account to browse for about a week, then they reverted back to allowing everyone to browse without one because they lost too many viewers.
But this also highlights a greater problem: If you're allowing people to browse social media platforms without accounts, what algorithm applies in that case? Is that the government curated feed? Or is that the rage-bait feed designed to spur engagement and sign-ups?
I don't care enough about this issue to form any opinions on the impacts to free speech or anything like that, but being able to choose to a social media feed that's entirely from the users I follow would be fantastic. What a dramatic quality-of-life improvement.
"You're censoring our billionaires' freedom to addict your people, psychologically damage your children, promote climate skepticism, spread lies, motivate people to lynch others"
Brilliant move by the Australian Government to combine the algorithm opt-out with other restrictions. All the headlines are just about opt-out, and the assumption is the US is complaining about opt-out and claiming it is censorship. I suspect the actual claim of censorship is about putting the "onus on platforms to stop harmful content, such as illegal pornography and videos promoting disordered eating, from being shared" (from another BBC article, and similar in AU news sources). I expect manosphere stuff and maybe Nazi will end up in there too, or added later once laws are in place.
Here is a law I wish we had for social media. Let's just align incentives.
If you are working on a social media platform, and your total comp is >= 500k, your children must use your platform for the average amount of time that children of that age range use your platform nationwide.
>In a rare submission to the proposed laws, the US embassy in Canberra said it had "serious concerns[...] "We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined"
is this like one of those "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" memes? Why is the US embassy making submissions to proposed laws in Australia? The day cannot come soon enough when the last country tells the US to voice its concerns somewhere else
From my cursory look at this last night, the US doesn't like that the definition of "harm" is so poorly defined. They either don't care about the broader concept of opting out of an algorithmic feed or aren't willing to criticise it.
I've been disappointed by the coverage because none of it has helped me understand the legal context behind why they don't like this one specific thing.
They commonly take issue with laws against hate speech in other countries. But, actually, they themselves do have limits on speech. The line in their case is issuing death threats. It's an arbitrary line, both hate speech as in suggesting people of a given class should die, and direct death threats, can lead to people being harmed.
I don't much care about the US's arbitrary opinion on where the line is. And I don't think it's really a slippery slope either. There is a very acceptable range of things that could be reasonably considered banned speech.
The rights of methuselahn undying companies with limited liability to have unlimited speech, unlimited political spending, unlimited rights to do what they will shall remain untrammeled, it seems.
The other day I opened my instagram and was presented with a few frames of a big hairy vagina in my explore feed.
I don’t find this “harmful” but it’s not what I expect the algorithm to show me when I literally open instagram to find out about local events and sudden changes in cafe open hours in my area.
I really hate the way meta and other social media companies have injected themselves into our communities and then sent us all insane and set us against each other using algorithms.
I suggest that "vagina" is US terminology for pudenda in its most general aspect. The imprecision can be excused given that the population of our once-great nation is not known for its proficiency in matters of either sex education or geography.
Can we agree that these apps should be renamed antisocial media?
I'm not sure what planet you live on but the one where I live, the general term for female genitalia is a "vagina". I've never heard someone say, "kiss my vulva".
As is common in political shenanigans, the draft bill has a euphemistic label ('algorithmic opt-out') - what it actually does is allow unspecified bureaucrats such as the Minister for Communications to designate any individual piece of content as 'harmful' and have it banished from the internet.
As an Australian who just wants relatively free access to information (and the ability to freely/easily discuss it), it's frustrating.
And it's not the first time the Australian government has done this; last year they banned U16 from social media, several weeks later everyone was alerted to Bondi by... social media.. so they could get the heck out of there, but U16... they were left clueless and unable to get updates (news sites ran 30+ minutes behind real-time events and official sites like NSW Police took 70+ minutes to even announce there was a shooter).
Two options from what I could see.
You can entirely opt out of algorithmic feed and just see an unfiltered list of your connections posts.
Or if you choose the algorithmic option, there's some ability for the ministers to request content be removed.
Could it be abused to remove content they don't like? Of course
Is it a marked improvement on Meta/Tiktok getting carte Blanche to select what people see? I think so.
Thanks. Reading it at first seemed like “the people” here is you know, end users, people toggle some settings on their devices, not a government employee deciding. It turns out a government employee doing it. Yeah, just because US government is goofy doesn’t somehow make others sane or good.
You say draft bill, but can you link to it? I can only find descriptions from the PM: https://www.pm.gov.au/media/my-feed-my-way
What you've described isn't part of this?
"The draft laws provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps or websites, and streamline the child cyber-bulling and adult cyber abuse schemes to enable eSafety to deal more quickly with this harmful material."
> can you link to (the draft bill)?
https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/docume...
On the intent of the Act:
> The objects of this Act are to improve and promote online safety for Australians by ... imposing a duty on persons responsible for online services to ensure a safe online environment
On special powers granted to the Minister:
> the Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine material or conduct, or a combination of material and conduct, that the Minister is satisfied may cause serious harm
Thank you.
How you went from U16 social media ban to the worst terrorist attack in AU history since port arthur therefore social media good is staggering...
Suppose government had instead banned spare car tires. 99.99% of the time, we wouldn't notice. But during an emergency the effects of such a ban become apparent. Similar with the social media ban.
Consider the situation for a 15 year-old on or nearby Bondi at the time of the attack. You hear.. fireworks?.. a car backfiring..? and meh, you continue sipping your iced matcha latte.
Sometimes having the choice to learn/see/hear information matters. Very often (like with a spare tire ban) nobody even notices the ban - but at certain times, it really matters.
Is this not a bias towards the status quo, conflating two entirely distinct problems?
We have problem A: receiving timely updates for life threatening events has not been implemented, or poorly.
Then we have problem B: social media companies have monetised engagement, without any guardrails to avoid detrimental effects, and continue to push to maximise this.
Just because the status quo involves a high speed, low latency, flood of unverified information via social media, which tangentially solves problem A in cherry-picked examples, does not mean it has to always be the case. This same proposed solution is also rife for abuse, in the same way a legitimate early warning can be sent out it can just as easily be used to spread hoax events.
Would it not make more sense to actually solve problem A, e.g. get the police to pull their finger out and use the emergency broadcast service available in just about every phone on the planet, and treat problem B as its own distinct issue? By conflating the two I don't see how we will ever solve either problem in any effective manner. By doing so we're essentially agreeing to a world where our best case scenario is the narrow intersection of A & B, while the rest of the time we're left with the full outer join of the two problems - bad access to verified emergency updates and a flood of engagement-bait crap on social media.
To be clear, I do not agree with how this legislation is being put forward nor with how it is proposed to be controlled. This is layman's legislation at its worst for a highly technical subject, and even in a more charitable light I struggle to see it as anything but a distraction and power grab rolled into one, with little likelihood of solving the problem at hand.
You can literally justify absolutely anything using that logic.
That one time the toddler reached for his daddy's unsecured rifle and killed the intruder who had a history of perpetrating violent home invasions. Therefore, don't secure your firearms.
That is the seed of a reasonable argument against securing guns - if you're expecting to have to use a gun to defend yourself, you want to have a gun and have it on hand and ready to use. If it is illegal to have the gun out of storage then that is a problem in the event of being attacked by someone.
It seems unlikely that the toddler to be using a gun effectively though.
> As is common in political shenanigans, the draft bill has a euphemistic label ('algorithmic opt-out') - what it actually does is allow unspecified bureaucrats such as the Minister for Communications to designate any individual piece of content as 'harmful' and have it banished from the internet.
Not a fan of the paternalistic/nanny state attitude of the current government or that ministers track record, but isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
> isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
Precisely. This bill is being sold to the public under a benign label, but smuggled along with it are some dubious affordances. The same was accomplished with 'age verification for U16s', which, if named correctly, would have been called 'everyone (not just U16s) must present a licence or use a VPN to use the internet'.
Can you elaborate how this might be different than laws in Germany that disallow certain speech around white supremacy? Or laws that disallow violent rhetoric?
> Can you elaborate how this might be different than laws in Germany that disallow certain speech [...]
Those laws explicitly declare what they ban. This one doesn't.
I think censorship is bad because it restricts expression, and I believe restricting expression is bad because I believe free expression is both a human right and incredibly important to free society. But obviously, there are times when we collectively are going to agree to restrict rights to some other benefit. The question is of balance. To what degree are we restricting expression, and to what end? Is it truly justified?
I have no idea if this proposal is shit or not, I'm not steeped enough in it, but it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?" - well, the important details are literally everything else other than the part where it is censorship, so that's the part we need to address...
> it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?"
That’s not what your parent comment is saying. Asking “how do these things differ” does not imply support for either thing, it’s a request for clarification. Not every question is an argument in disguise.
Yes, merely asking how two things differ is not necessarily intended to be an argument in favor or against something. I used deduction based on context to figure out that part.
Text being low bandwidth, I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies it's unreasonable to assume that making a comparison to something that people are highly sympathetic to isn't likely to be an appeal to sympathy for the other thing being compared. I just disagree, my interpretation was completely reasonable here. If it's wrong, well, it's not like I told them to go fuck themselves. It would then merely be a misunderstanding. Though, I doubt it.
(To be honest, though, I also should say that I actually have no idea whether they would lean more for or against on the comparison. Not everyone is a fan of hate speech laws, after all.)
> I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies (…)
You are wrong. My point is closer to “don’t make assumptions; it muddies and derails the conversation and leads to unnecessary unproductive disagreements”.
Compare your original answer to a sibling response, which was made before yours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49811633
Significantly shorter than yours and answers the question (yours frankly doesn’t) without assumptions.
America constantly restricts expression it doesn't like. It's just that you believe being topless in the park is bad speech but calling for genocide is good speech. Billionaires using computers to slurp up and regurgitate others work is good, but people copying others work is bad. Saying "lets kill the president" is bad, but saying "lets kill the senator" is good.
America does not have a monopoly on what good and bad speech is, and it certainly restricts speech, via legal means, via cultural means, and via application of force.
I'm not personally a big fan of all U.S. restrictions on speech, but I don't really see your point, to be honest. The U.S. can right sometimes and wrong others. In principle, I don't really see why the U.S. government and its officials generally shouldn't be able to raise concerns about legislation and litigation that may impact U.S. businesses, especially if they believe they might impact inadvertently the rights of U.S. citizens. There are plenty of examples where I believe the U.S. official or agency was spot-on.
If you are not a fan of U.S. soft power though, then it seems like the future will be brighter for you; we're certainly burning all of those bridges as fast as possible. But, that is really neither here nor there.
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Electing a censor doesn't make them any less of a censor.
And?
Not everyone wants to live in a society where the American form of limited free speech is the accepted societal norm. Australia can choose its own views, so can France, and Britain, and Turkey, and China. It's not a colony of the us.
It should be no problem to call things by their name (censorship) then.
Censorship is the government suppressing information. If people actually believe that this is how things should be, let the government introduce official “censorship bills” and call publicly for “additional censorship measures”.
The fact that they aren’t doing that demonstrates that they feel the need to hide what they are really doing, which speaks of an inherent wrongness that has nothing to do with a US/non-US culture divide.
The post did not use the name "censorship", it just tried to trivialise the democratic will of a country which does not want to give more power to US billionaires, claiming it's just the whim of an "unspecified bureaucrat"
US views on the limited freedom of speech the US government allows are different to those of the limited freedom of speech that Australia, Germany, etc allow
All those countries limit freedom of speech, it doesn't make anything that doesn't exactly copy American "freedoms" (and indeed lack of freedom) wrong.
Of course argue this and HN will flag you
The more speech you have, the more powerful you are. That means those who can have more speech and more targetted speech (i.e. people who are wealthier) are more powerful. Not everyone likes that. You might, that doesn't make you right.
Yeah and its good if Australia becomes a more like China in this regard
For context: personally strongly in favour of legislation that will kneecap algorithmic feeds in almost any way.
A big concern with these (and other associated laws) being pushed through is it grants the eSafety Commissioner powers to edict what’s allowed.
That position is appointed, not elected.
"Disingenuous" implies someone is doing something on purpose. Anyone calling a Minister an unelected bureaucrat is just mistaken - obviously a minister isn't an unelected bureaucrat. They're an elected bureaucrat.
That said, whoever this Anika Wells woman is the law looks like a bad idea and it is nice that the US has found it in their interests to say something helpful.
Social media could have just as easily spread misinformation about the Bondi incident. It was a failure of the NSW Police to not use the SMS emergency warning systems, which is not a good reason to keep everyone on social media.
We elected a central-left government, and somehow ended up with center right. Its deeply frustrating.
The days of the left being more supportive of free speech than the right are long over
Yeah, nah, the Australian right has been casting pro-Palestinian speech as anti-semitic.
In the States, the right has been supportive of government suppression of speech, including the communications agency (FCC) threatening broadcasters into cancelling an interview with a politician in the opposition party. The right's free speech record is far worse in the US and Australia.
Admittedly, neither side of the aisle have good free speech practices in most of the rest of the world.
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> Being “Pro Palestine” would mean a reverse “genocide”
No, that's not the popular viewpoint. You're expressing a niche viewpoint or the inaccurate viewpoint propagated by some political actors.
It is a super popular viewpoint in certain populations. It might not be _your_ view point, but there are may people who want exactly this. They usually won't say it out loud because they want all the support they can get.
Should I remind that Palestine is against the two state solution? What would happen with the Israelis if Palestine will be free from the river to the sea?
Both sides are damnable in this conflict, but I don't buy this idea of the gazans "just wanting peace".
I don't think moving them would be necessary, but moving them 30 miles into what is currently Israel proper is far from a genocide.
Unless you think all of Israel would cease to exist or something, but that's not the stakes here at all.
Palestine can exist alongside Israel. You are the only one "picking sides" here.
It’s precisely my point. Those people will have to learn to live side, and it’s not going to happen when people are taking sides, buying into propaganda etc.
Like I said, it’s not a football game where you run around Sydney with your face painted screaming “from the river to the sea” it will solve nothing.
The majority of supporters of Palestianian people are not doing that.
Palestine isn't annexing neighboring nations or refusing humanitarian corridors to starving civilian populations.
It's okay to be pro-Palestine if you want to promote peace. Likud certainly isn't making any headway on rapprochement.
We have nothing to do with this war, and just because "one side invaded the other" does not make either of them right - both sides have been murdering each other over religious garbage for 100s of years
This isn't our business and we shouldn't be involved
Thinking that we, as Australians, need to get involved looks to me like "aw these poor little brown people don't know what they're doing they need a big strong white man to sort it out!"
Picking a side here isn't advocating for peace it's posturing
> both sides have been murdering each other over religious garbage for 100s of years
The Mandate for Palestine and Jewish resettlement started in 1917 after the first world war.
Unless you're talking about the Roman expulsion of Jews from Judea in the 2nd century CE? The claim is still quite a stretch.
I did specify over religious garbage and not over this specific piece of land
Regardless, the point is we aren't "fighting for peace and freedom," we're just murdering a bunch of people in a different country over something we have nothing to do with
I guess the issue was October 7 happened , which was an attack on a “peace and love” festival full of teenagers. Was that too a promotion of peace ?
I’m not saying there is a right side. I’m saying both sides have issues. Hence my point about being anti-war being a better option.
There's some merit to your viewpoint because Hamas was at one time democratically elected. I don't think there's a strong case for claims that the majority of Palestinian people supported the October 7th attack on either military or noncombatant targets. One being that the majority of Palestinians were not of voting age at the time.
October 7th being an illegal attack justified a military response from the Israeli Defense Forces to secure their border, and most of the world agreed. Opposition solidified when IDF conducted mass destruction of civilian structures and independent observer-corroborated systematic murder of noncombatants, many of whom were children.
While two wrongs don't make a right, it's justified to support a people who are the victims of a genocide according to credible observers.
I agree, I just don't think you can really be only "pro-palestine" because it's sort of like the same thing in reverse.
If Hamas was in-charge of the situation , what do you think would happen to Israelis, you think they'd be well looked after by Hamas?
What should be happening if we had good world leadership is Israel would be bought under control through sanctions, we'd investigate and prosecute war criminals on both sides and the world would help eliminate Hamas and Iran (because they help Russia kill people in Ukraine) and support Hamas, but yeah, not in that world.
Realistically October 7 was a huge, huge disaster for the Arabs in the region.
Your dogged equating of support for the Palestinian people with support for Hamas is elevating a minority view.
This would be like my claiming that all Liberal Party of Australia members hate aboriginals. Many do, but that is not how the majority of Liberals see it. Or a claim that all US Republicans are racist. Not sure what nationality you are, but you should get the picture.
Are you saying that most Palestinians don't believe in Hamas, or their message? At one point they were elected...
Have you ever read this? https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas
Anyway, it's ironic because if you look at all the hate directed at Israel, you could only draw the same conclusion. People hate Israelis, even though it's largely their government doing the fighting ?
If you read that doctrine, you will see propaganda is a major part of Hamas' modus operandi, and many westerners fall for it too. It's actually amazing how many point form the 1998 charter people seem to be repeating now, in 2026.
Back to my point really, if you gave control of the area back to Hamas (because who else would run things), what do you think would happen to innocent people in Israel? If all the people who attended those protests were successful, what do you think the outcome would be ?
Being pro Palestine in no way implies a "reverse genocide". JFC
If you gave the leadership of Palestine (?) what they want, what do you think that would mean for Israelis ?
The Right/Republicans have always touted free speech. They love getting their hate out.
The Left have always been a bit more 'censory', generally because of their bleeding hearts on behalf of the minorities that are the targets of the Right's exercising of their free speech.
Such is my understanding. I don't really mind either stance, with the caveat that anything 'censory' has a chance of having it's definitions expanded (and admittedly, this is succumbing to the slippery slope fallacy).
> The Right/Republicans have always touted free speech.
> The Left have always been a bit more 'censory'
Not "always", and not even now. It's always contingent and situational. Same goes for nearly every clause in the Bill of Rights.
At various points the left has been associated with the fights against obscenity laws, against Cold War loyalty oaths, against blacklisting, against bans of books.
At various points the right has been associated with the fights against desecration of the American flag, against the teaching of human evolution in schools, against depictions of sex in media, against anti-war demonstrations.
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The right is just as "censory" as the left with things they don't like.
But I think both "the right" and "the left" are kind of reductive and caricatures. I guess forcing you to go in a camp is one of the great woes of American politics.
> But I think both "the right" and "the left" are kind of reductive and caricatures. I guess forcing you to go in a camp is one of the great woes of American politics.
100%, it only seems to fuel the already-present tendency for tribalism.
... right wing freedom of speech is defined with a simple rule.
you're allowed to say anything you want as long as bari weiss determines that you are sufficiently zionist and wont say anything that isnt zionist enough
What on earth is centre-right about the ALP? Its essentally Fabian at this point.
They're in bed with the resource and gambling sectors, and other big business.
Their record on making actual changes to benefit the people of the country vs keeping their donors sweet is pretty terrible lately. They've half-arsed so much in the last few years it's becoming a meme.
Fabians, AFAICT, pride themselves on evidence-based policy direction. That would have (for example) implied a full ban on gambling advertising as the government's own enquiry recommended, rather than whatever watered-down industry sop Albo actually pushed through.
I think you meant to say: We intended on electing a central-left government, and got a far-left Fabian government.
Far left? LMFAO, what planet are you from?
Labor is in bed with big business, the gambling lobby and the resources sector. Ain't nothing 'left' about any of that.
The only people who think Labor are far left are those who have swallowed the ON/Wannabe-MAGA propaganda, as they try desperately to portray the mainstream as radical. The problem is that Albo's a boring, grey, middle-of-the-road, managerial type of PM so it's laughable to anyone with half a brain.
Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of problems with how Labor are going about governing, this is not an endorsement of them. But the idea they're far anything is such utter brainrot.
The last time the Australian Labor Party was a centre-left government was around the mid 1970s.
You got exactly what you voted for. The left is pro censorship now. From political correctness to deplatforming, to right speech to labeling things misinformation to forgetting my body my choice when Covid came along. This is the natural end of wokism.
You're getting downvoted for the factual inaccuracy of your statement. The party in control of government in the United States has gone to extraordinary lengths to chill free speech. From overt viewpoint discrimination for broadcast television to banning press outlets critical of the administration, to deporting people in legal statuses for political speech, there is no modern parallel by any other political party. The right wing's support for free speech has enormously fallen.
> "We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
Australia should put this submission in the circular file. The US government's opinion about any of this shouldn't matter to Australia, especially when the intent is to allow users to elect to use the natural state of no-algorithm time-based-ordering presentation of the content. This is like saying that an impact study needs to be done to determine if walking to the end of the block is safe enough to be allowed rather than blasting people out of a cannon towards the end of the block. Or saying that people should not be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that order if they choose to.
> Another worry was that the proposed laws could affect Australia's "reputation as a jurisdiction that enables innovation," the submission said.
How magnanimous of the US to be concerned about this for Australia.
Are you not aware that Australia is a willful participant in the wholesale abrogation of human rights, in the form of Pine Gap?
Of course the US has a say in Australian affairs when it comes to matters of human rights about censorship and access to information. Without that stranglehold, the Australian public may well inform themselves about the crimes of their state, committed every single millisecond, against close to 2 billion other human beings.
It is beyond ridiculous that Australians whines about their special relationship with the US, while doing absolutely nothing about the very criminal behavior that both states are co-partners in committing.
Australia and the United States have mutual interests and investments in the Pacific. Underlying this is a sense of shared cultural values and shared legacy as former British colonies.
To act as if the United States is sticking its nose in Australia as if it's Venezuela or something shows a rather pedestrian understanding of Australian history and geopolitics.
If the United States retreats from the world the Australian people will be among those who suffer the most. The interest in each other is mutual.
Edit: I'm not endorsing any particular intervention I'm merely pointing out the parent comment's framing (basically Australia should just ignore the United States or vice-versa) is silly given the reality of the relationship between the two countries, especially right now given how Australia views the present risks associated with the growing threat of Chinese hegemony in the Pacific.
The US expects it's 'allies' to be subservient, and to do as they are told. Simple as that
I'm sure the Australian people will be devastated at the loss of the Instagram algorithmic feed.
If the US 'retreats' from Australia because Australia acts like a sovereign country and makes it's own laws as it sees fit, then Australia is better off without them.
The reality is nowhere near as stark, however. Australia can tell the US to go fuck itself over it's latest comments and nothing will likely come of it. Maybe some temporary tariffs - more punishment for US citizens and a slight dip in Australian exports. Big fucking whoop.
It will not 'ruin the relationship' to anywhere near 'retreats from Australia' levels. Australia possibly holds quite a good hand given how important Pine Gap is to US interests in that entire quadrant of the globe. Australia could probably flex on that.
Pine Gap is not a ‘good hand’, it is a shackle and we Australians are bound by its oppressive function just as negatively as are the 2 billion people whose human rights it abrogates every millisecond of the day.
Not just Pine Gap. Exmouth, Kojarena, and Darwin too.
I think Hanlon's razor or rather a variation of it applies here, in geopolitics and life in general.
Never mistake for bonhomie that which is adequately explained by money and self-interest
The United States could retreat from the world for any reason at any time. Could be because Australia refused to be annexed, could be because the white house fridge ran out of diet coke that morning. Then donald could change his mind the next day.
Given that there's no rhyme, reason, or consistency to it, best to ignore nonsensical, provocative statements, keep calm, and carry on.
This article is conflating two things. The US response to the Digital Duty of Care law and the US response to the algorithm opt-out provision.
The US did criticize the opt out provision.
But when the US says this, its about a different provision in DDC, which says platforms need to proactively remove harmful content.
>"We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
What is an "algorithm"? Showing the 20 most recent posts is an algorithm, but I doubt that's what they're targeting with the law.
I'm not just trying to find a technical gotcha here. I think it's worth identifying what exactly about an "algorithm" causes it to cross the line and become harmful.
When does an algorithm become harmful?
When it is designed and optimized to maximize the amount of time it engages the user?
What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
What about an algorithm that maximizes the amount of ads people see? Or the amount of money that the company makes?
Yes.
Most Australians dislike social media. We are underrepresented on it, and it shovels the US’s issues down our throat. The current algorithms mainly send us US political propaganda and things that are supposed to make us hate nearby Asian powers like China.
Then why don't you get off it? Social media is not capable of shoveling anything down anyones throat.
> Social media is not capable of shoveling anything down anyones throat.
This statement is manifestly untrue. The malign power of social media is precisely the reason that legislation has been introduced in Australia and elsewhere, and that Meta et al are battling and losing "addiction" lawsuits worldwide.
> What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
If only we had 20+ years of scientific and societal evidence to show that regardless of what you think is "on the surface", the effects are catastrophic to mental health, democracy, the concept of truth, and everything else.
I'm sure the final law will outline the specific details. But the intent of the law is not algorithms in a computer science definition, but modern recommendation engines.
Showing a chronological feed of accounts you have followed in this case would be non algorithmic. This is how all social media worked before the modern hellscape we are in.
> What is an "algorithm"?
To you and me it's a very wide category, and there may be hundreds or thousands or even millions involved in me simply typing this, it being saved somewhere and then served back to you.
For lay-people though, it's become a term which means "The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you". So for lay-people to want to turn off the algorithm, they tend to mean going back to "just what your friends posted, in order"
> When does an algorithm become harmful?
I think this is a research subject. AFAICT it's pretty certain now that social media 'algorithms' have been optimised for addictiveness, which is likely to overlap somewhat with what users find interesting, but also cover things they find mildly titillating and/or outrageous.
The harms come in a bunch of forms. The never-ending scrolling of bite-sized videos seems massively destructive to attention span, and people seem to get addicted to it and may neglect other parts of their life. The platforms also seem really keen to send men and boys off to pretty hateful 'manosphere' content which is apparently making life hell for women (including teachers of teenage boys). Then we have all the body-image and anxiety issues caused in teenagers constantly exposed to influencers showing off their (faked) wealth, beauty etc.
Switching off the "shoving this all in your face" part of social media seems to me to be a win. When it was actually a way to keep in touch with friends and family it was a different game.
> The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you
That (plus a clause that exempts algorithms with user controls with full informedness and ability to confidently and reliably predict the outcome = old good filters and such) is the thing that should be in the legislation’s definitions section.
But then in the actual law it’s worse than “algorithm”, they’re actually banning broad over generalizations and design patterns instead, stuff like this:
>> recommender features – content selected and displayed based on information associated with the user’s account;
(Obvious legit use cases are regional content and user preferences.)
>> endless-feed features – continuous feeds of end-user content;
(Pure design pattern, pagination can be addictive at any span size.)
Dark patterns are called that for a reason. Having to click "next page" is a point of friction that slows and stops consumption. Pageless increases engagement in an addictive way - it's why companies do it.
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue
Your claims that these specific features provide no harm are belied by our knowledge that they do.
If "recommender" algorithms were the same as "just show me what my friends posted in chronological order", then there would not be such resistance to implementing the latter.
If endless scrolling were the same as pagination, then apps optimized for addictiveness would show a roughly equal distribution of both. But they do not.
Recommender algorithms as defined aren’t just the recommender algorithms you’re thinking about. It’s merely this idea that precise definition matter, nothing more. I’m not arguing that it was a bad idea to restrict some crappy patterns, or anything like that. Just that lawmakers defined that poorly.
And endless scrolling is pagination with a page size of one and a gesture (scroll down or swipe) for the next page. And trust me, “next page” can be helluva addictive. Endless pagination is an aesthetic preference. It may make it more slicker, frictionless, more visually appealing to get addicted, sure, but it doesn’t change a thing about the core element of the addiction. Same endless feed can be easily made counter-adductive by degrading relevance past some threshold, which clearly tells me the issue is elsewhere.
You just repeated your claims that they are the same without actually addressing anythink I said pointing out that they are not
It’s a good question, and it’s not well defined. I am hoping that it allows us to customise feeds more. If I have problems with body image, don’t show me topless photos. Same goes with alcohol and gambling, which some platforms do have. The answer must not be either be subjected to content you don’t want to see or don’t use social media at all.
I think the line for algorithms is anything machine learning or neural network based, not simple ordering.
Side note: When iterating on male avatars, ChatGPT incrementally increases muscular features without being prompted to do so. There are biases in these machine-learned algorithms.
Wow, no, actually the complete opposite. Algorithms are free speech but not fair speech. They let those with money or otherwise control over the algorithm to speak far louder than anyone else, giving them an unfair speech advantage, or even taking away the free speech of others by drowning them out.
We need free and fair speech, not just free speech. Everyone should have an equal voice. That means no algorithms. You get one voice, people choose to listen to you or not.
They can choose whether or not to use the product with your algorithm. You want censorship.
You can choose not to go to work too. Have fun doing that. Many social media apps today are essentially required to use because official announcements of all sorts are only made there.
Yours is the sort of unrealistic viewpoint often used to justify this sort of propaganda. Further, you are lying. Banning algorithms in no way prevents you personally from saying or commenting on whatever you wish. Your free speech is fully intact.
But by supporting forced algorithms on social media you are the one who wants effective censorship.
It is not forced because you don't have to go on social media. Comparing that to not working is ridiculous.
Country that is the reason that globally we can't have breasts on social media, even in completely non-sexual contexts, complains about "censorship" from a country that wants to avoid melting its childrens' brains.
As an Australian, I disagree and look forward to opting out.
Also, I’m not proud of this but Australia has no explicit constitutional right to free speech, and no bill of rights at the federal level AFAIK.
I prefer free speech, but if a country has already chosen the route to not have it, might as well use that advantageously.
Don’t get me wrong, it sucks we don’t have it, I wish we had it and I admire the US for having it.
I’m just pointing out Australian’s don’t have the ability to draw on it’s constitution to push back on government censorship which does take place in other forms.
Australia doesn't have protected speech. We're starting to see the dam break where rules that were left unexplored because it would go against the US driven view of globalization is starting to wane due to the US's loss (self destruction?) of its soft power.
By opt-out they mean opt-in to a government curated algorithm, no doubt.
Some doubt, actually. From the Guardian's reporting:
> Under the plan – dubbed “my feed, my way” – users opting out of the algorithm will see content only from individuals and groups they have actively chosen to follow.
> Users would be asked what they want their default feed to be through a pop-up message provided on their platform of choice.
So I should look forward to the day I see my Reddit feed free of r/Fauxmoi propaganda? Or does Reddit get a free pass like it has with age verification? Because we're still able to browse Reddit without an account, for starters. They had a popup that it required an account to browse for about a week, then they reverted back to allowing everyone to browse without one because they lost too many viewers.
But this also highlights a greater problem: If you're allowing people to browse social media platforms without accounts, what algorithm applies in that case? Is that the government curated feed? Or is that the rage-bait feed designed to spur engagement and sign-ups?
This sounds like heaven, actually.
I don't care enough about this issue to form any opinions on the impacts to free speech or anything like that, but being able to choose to a social media feed that's entirely from the users I follow would be fantastic. What a dramatic quality-of-life improvement.
A return to actual social media!
I wonder in what creative ways they'll maliciously conform.
By government curated, you mean business curated, no doubt.
US should mind its own business
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. It never meant you got to commandeer someone else’s printing press, TV network, or website.
Incredible that US public service does the bidding of corporate America.
It's like freedom.equals(we don't like regulation at all)
"You're censoring our billionaires' freedom to addict your people, psychologically damage your children, promote climate skepticism, spread lies, motivate people to lynch others"
Serious violation!
Brilliant move by the Australian Government to combine the algorithm opt-out with other restrictions. All the headlines are just about opt-out, and the assumption is the US is complaining about opt-out and claiming it is censorship. I suspect the actual claim of censorship is about putting the "onus on platforms to stop harmful content, such as illegal pornography and videos promoting disordered eating, from being shared" (from another BBC article, and similar in AU news sources). I expect manosphere stuff and maybe Nazi will end up in there too, or added later once laws are in place.
Here is a law I wish we had for social media. Let's just align incentives.
If you are working on a social media platform, and your total comp is >= 500k, your children must use your platform for the average amount of time that children of that age range use your platform nationwide.
So, would you then have to submit to forced breeding programs?
Which would play into all sorts of agendas.
US regime’s interference in this discourse is only likely to make the average Australian voter want the reforms even more
Trump continues to accidentally and involuntarily make the world a better place.
See also: the Iran war seems to be the greatest advertisement for reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
https://newint.org/energy/2026/has-trump-doomed-fossil-fuels
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/iran-war-energy-shoc...
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/09/nx-s1-5872786/iran-war-evs-so...
Well, we know which side the government is on then.
How can a opt-out ever be considered censorship?
It's "censoring" the rich and powerful, since they can't influence as many people as easily anymore.
>In a rare submission to the proposed laws, the US embassy in Canberra said it had "serious concerns[...] "We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined"
is this like one of those "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" memes? Why is the US embassy making submissions to proposed laws in Australia? The day cannot come soon enough when the last country tells the US to voice its concerns somewhere else
Wonder if they'll ever stop to take a look in the mirror every once in a while
From my cursory look at this last night, the US doesn't like that the definition of "harm" is so poorly defined. They either don't care about the broader concept of opting out of an algorithmic feed or aren't willing to criticise it.
I've been disappointed by the coverage because none of it has helped me understand the legal context behind why they don't like this one specific thing.
They commonly take issue with laws against hate speech in other countries. But, actually, they themselves do have limits on speech. The line in their case is issuing death threats. It's an arbitrary line, both hate speech as in suggesting people of a given class should die, and direct death threats, can lead to people being harmed.
I don't much care about the US's arbitrary opinion on where the line is. And I don't think it's really a slippery slope either. There is a very acceptable range of things that could be reasonably considered banned speech.
How can anyone take this seriously when the US also recently imposed a 12.5% tariff justified by “Australia’s active slave trade”?
I think most of the people at this moment, rightfully, perceive this as an circus.
Isn't it all? But oh it's the greatest show on Earth.
Seems that Trump is as beholden to the US tech industry as the US tech industry is subservient to Trumps whims.
Nice to know where that nerve is though. Other countries: pay attention!
The rights of methuselahn undying companies with limited liability to have unlimited speech, unlimited political spending, unlimited rights to do what they will shall remain untrammeled, it seems.
It won’t stop here.
The Australian Prime Minister hates social media.
This is step two of a never ending assault.
i dont understand how letting users choose not to something is censorship... Is my curated RSS feed censorship?
THE MYTH OF CONSENSUAL CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINES
Me: I want chrono timelines!
Australia: I want chrono timelines!
Trump: I DON'T!
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
Works for algo timelines with Instagram, user, and Australian govt too
I'm not familiar with this meme, but who are you referring to?
Zuck? Advertisers?
Because if we're talking about users, they'll be given an option, not be forced.
The other day I opened my instagram and was presented with a few frames of a big hairy vagina in my explore feed.
I don’t find this “harmful” but it’s not what I expect the algorithm to show me when I literally open instagram to find out about local events and sudden changes in cafe open hours in my area.
I really hate the way meta and other social media companies have injected themselves into our communities and then sent us all insane and set us against each other using algorithms.
Did you mean vulva? The vagina is the moist canal from the uterus to the labia minora; the vulva is the sometimes rather fuzzy bun.
I would avoid Instagram.
I suggest that "vagina" is US terminology for pudenda in its most general aspect. The imprecision can be excused given that the population of our once-great nation is not known for its proficiency in matters of either sex education or geography.
Can we agree that these apps should be renamed antisocial media?
I'm not sure what planet you live on but the one where I live, the general term for female genitalia is a "vagina". I've never heard someone say, "kiss my vulva".