Australians will be able to switch off social media algorithms under planned legislation
BBC News
Australians will be able to switch off social media algorithms under planned legislation
Firms like Meta, Google and TikTok should face "substantial" penalties if they don't give the option, minister says.
Should’ve done this instead of garbage age verification.
I am SO uncomfortable with the idea of handing images of my id over.
I love the idea of a company selling my id to some ex.
Unrelated to algorithms but I opened Roblox yesterday after not playing for a long while and I found that they’ll give you a ‘free item’ if you do an age check
Disgusting, coercive bullshit just so kids can give their biometric data to American companies. Funny how the eSafety Commission managed to completely forget about the privacy rights of children, let alone those of adults, just so they can rush through their age verification legislation like the world depended on it.
Exactly. I do believe that the algorithm does more damage than anything that age verification will address and it impacts all of us.
Keep your eyes peeled on horrible surveillance bills c-34 and s-209 in Canada
Nothing is a low bar, and that’s all age verification is going to address.
Age verification took away the need to regulate it so it’s safe for kids. Now it’s not safe for anyone.
Remember when people would post event flyers to facebook and everyone subscribed to the group would see it?
Now it’s like trying to withdrawal your pay from a poker machine instead of an ATM.
Am I the only one who thinks big tech won’t do jack shit other than nod and smile and install a user button that doesn’t actually change anything at all?
They are so NOT going to turn this off. This – the ability to manipulate users by controlling exactly what they see – is the sole reason they are in business. It gets them ad revenue, data to resell, and massive, uncontrollable political power.
And they’re just going to let a user turn that highly individualized control off and turn themselves into a less monetizable, more ad immune user one by one because some govt told them to? The same governments that have been telling them not to do this or that for decades now?
Lol, pull the other one.
Tbf they already do that. Google’s had a button to turn off ad personalization that’s never worked since like, 2014 or something
It DOES work, they don’t show ads based on personalized data. What it’s not garanteed is that are not processing or selling your data on the back anyway.
Ad personalization is hard to verify because it’s all happening on the backend. What you see in a feed is much more visible, so maybe that will make it harder to work around. I haven’t read much about how the legislation works and how it defines algorithms, but if it’s something like, “only show me people I’ve subscribed to”, then it would be pretty easy to verify whether they are showing that or not.
But in general, I agree. Big tech companies always find a way to work around this legislation. Enforcement is the issue, not the laws themselves.
I find it easy (when I’m not blocking literally every ad) because they are usually so fucking dumb - do you constantly get bombed by ads about stuff you’ve recently researched and purchased? If yes, personalization is on.
Huh, TIL. Thanks. Not even remotely surprised.
This is the Labor party bringing it in, so you can bet the legislation will just-barely-sort-of do what it says on the tin.
That’s what you get from centre-right governments…
I’d like to shut off fhe algorithms forcing me to see right wing transphobia on facebroach
Easy: get off of it.
If your family is that important and refuses to move: call them occasionally.
Every second you spend on it is another cent given to meta
I’ll text. Take it or leave it.
Yes its dumm to stay on there because of family. As your family has then to stay there because you are there, and suffer the harmful experience. You are then to blame for any shit that happens to them on there.
Get off. Close it down. Post your stuff somewhere decentralised and let them know how to contact you. If they want to see your pictures, post them there only.
If family isn’t willing to work on leaving FB, maybe they aren’t that much family material anyway
When I was on TikTok, I tried to stick to the “following” feed only, but it was very hard not to check the “for you page” (algorithmic feed), because the app is so good at knowing how to dazzle the user. It also defaulted to showing the algorithm when the app is reopened.
I only know a handful of other people who used the app, but they described the same problem: they follow people, but then they just use the algorithmic feed instead anyway.
All this to say that there are ways to present a choice to the user in such a way that users will not engage with that choice.
This was my first thought as well.
The vast majority of users couldn’t care less about “the algorithm”, and probably think it’s a good thing.
The people who need this aren’t interested.
I’ve been saying this for a while.
Of course, our right wing nut jobs won’t vote for it because they need rage bait to get votes (and normal people don’t post rage bait).
If this passes, Australia will turn sane again
Will be able to turn off - meaning on by default. It should be off by default.
The greens I think want it to be opt in.
However, it’s better to pass something and improve it later
At the moment, it’s a shit show
Honestly I’ve been in thinking over it and solution might be algorithms that are both open source and cryptographically random. Open source ofc, people should know exactly how their algorithms work. Cryptographically random precisely because a fully open source algorithm might be easy to game. And this should be made compulsory
That benefits bots
What is needed is the ability to do, subscribed only, friends of subscribed, and all
Fair, it was a mere shower thought.
Interesting how a vast majority of the right wingers I know, including my dad, don’t research anything at all, and only rely on algorithms to give them right wing rage bait.
My dad for example said to me that “all these foreign exchange students are getting $50k grants for entering the country on MY taxes” after hearing it on TikTok, then I did the most minor research and found that it’s only for one of the states (I think either QLD or WA, can’t remember which though). I rebutted his claim by stating that it’s state legislation and has no basis in taking other state taxes nor much federal tax, and he gave me a long winded explanation basically just to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Apparently getting force fed slop on TikTok and instagram reels makes you a prolific researcher, while actually researching makes you a bum or something.
AI makes you a researcher these days.
Every dumbfuck who never finished school and has no training is delighted it can make them seem smart.
I’ve literally had arguments with customers who have told me the “facts” based on my own code logs and explain API’s to me and what they do, in products I’ve been maintaining for years.
The biggest problem is that there is no incentive for AI to say they’re wrong
Nice.
Someone please tell them they can already do that. It’s called the Fediverse.
I wish people were more open to simply not using products they dont like. Its inconveniencing, sure, but if you fundamentally disagree with the platform youre on, just get off. Maybe also get off, while youre at it
Yup. I’m with you there.
Software is full of algorithms.
I know there is also the recent meaning where “algorithm” stands for recommender systems and algorithmic curation, but I expect lawmakers to be a little more precise in their wording.
They can’t, if they do they’re calling out the social media sites for purposely targeting addictive algorithms and then this bandaid fix will be noticed for the bandaid fix it is. Most people don’t know social media uses specifically designed to be addictive algorithms. What happens if everyone knows that. So they flatten out the language.
They want to make the Feed without algorithms so bad that nobody will use it.
Social media companies want regulation to keep out competition while allowing them to keep the ads and algorithm flowing as is today as much as possible
Coming up: upload your ID to verify your Australian citizenship
(but props to Australia for trying to regulate it nevertheless)
Reality: social media will be made unavailable in all Australia.
How to get me to move to Australia 😂
Odious shit like this is why the civilised world can’t take 'Murica seriously
Now, please tell us how we’re all in danger because we don’t all carry firearms
… Good.
I would probably use facebook much more if my feed was only my friends and followed pages. Their loss on insisting on this I guess.
Try this.
On youtube turn off the auto play and mindfully choose what you want. Stop getting force fed like a mindless bag. Also use Duck video player and skip the ads.
Misinformation,
Childlike common clay masses,
Like free heroin
Yea, I don’t understand people who don’t use their subscriptions.
or just use freetube or pipepipe to use the platform without an algorithm
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PSA: on youtube, you can turn off the algorithm by turning off watch history, so you will only see your subscriptions page, but also related videos under the current video you’re on. I spend less time there now, and enjoy the content I do watch much more.
If you’ve still got cookies on, the related videos are based in your algo. If you open a new private window and watch a few videos your front page will update to reflect what you’ve seen.
freetube/pipepipe, no tracking, no personalized algorithm. enjoy
Insert, “can I get some of that” meme.
Article is light on details. I’m curious how they define what is “algorithm”-generated content and what isn’t.
How in the world do you “switch off algorithms”? Even sort by new or purely random content is still an algorithm. Not to mention, if you switch to something like sort by new, that’s even easier to manipulate. Just have bot accounts flood the feeds with whatever propaganda they want to push.
This is a good idea in spirit, but until I see the actual legislation, I feel like this could very easily end up in the category of geriatric politicians completely failing their attempts at legislating tech.
This was what came to my mind as well, however Google does let you turn off your history for YouTube and when you do that (as I do) it just shows a blank page when you go there, so that’s one way it can be done.
Nobody does it because everybody likes to pretend they don’t like the crack until they have to go without. I do it on principle because YouTube has single-handedly changed a particular member of my family, one of the most innocuous people in the world, to someone who has loathsome opinions. I hate it a lot and don’t want that for myself. I am on no social media that serves up anything based on your previous clicking behavior.
On Youtube you can just click on subscriptions and it only shows content from channels you’re subscribed to. If you make some effort to curate the channels you’re subscribed to, there will be some pretty good content there.
To me, this should be the default page with the recommendation algorithm being an “explore” option to find some other channels to subscribe to.
The big problem with social media is you have millions of people competing with each other to grab attention. If the goal were instead to convince people to subscribe to their channel, people might actually put some effort into creating better content instead of trying to be the first to get out their hot take on whatever is going on. If they adjusted their interface to start up on the subscription feed, and have an explore feed which show maybe ten channels that have had a lot of subscriptions recently, it would probably solve a lot of problems with shit shit tier troll content dominating social media.
I think it also only suggests videos based on the one you’re currently watching too, or maybe your current session.
I also mostly do it out of principle because I used YouTube a lot before watch history was even a thing, and I don’t care for the shitty front page suggestions it disables anyway.
Algorithm off implies a lot of parameters about the user which could be disabled. Right now there are thousands of parameters being used to curate content to you. With it off you could get true random content which in theory should allow for you to not get sucked into the dopamine trap.
It makes good headlines
Read the article.
Damn, first legitimately good thing I’ve seen come out of that country in a while as far as legislation is concerned.
So what does that mean? No posts? Sort by newest? (Wouldn’t be too bad actually)
I mean, this is pretty good in theory, in practice, we can just move more people to the fediverse
I hope the EU follow up and do the same
Sounds like Australian based VPN nodes will get a lot more popular…
Good … all social media should be heavily regulated and controlled everywhere. Social media has become as integrated and influential in our lives like newspapers and television and radio once were … they heavily regulated those media in the past, they should do the same for all social media everywhere now.
Right now, its basically just the wild west and governments are always playing catch up or just blindly being controlled by the corporations behind all social media
That would kill the Fediverse and other alternatives too, though, because they wouldn’t be allowed to exist by said regulations. What you’re suggesting is gonna result in vendor lock-in by making it impossible for smaller competition to comply.
Now, if there were a site that we could design our own algorithms, that would be gold. Just want to see your friends? Cool, press that button. Just want to shop for your next adventure? Cool, press that button. Looking for fun things to do over the weekend? Cool, push that button. I want to buy stuff, I just want to see everything available and not have it shoved down my throat.
The easiest way this could work would be allowing you to group your subscriptions manually or automatically tagging them into preset categories (which would still use AI technically). It’s not really feasible to create an endless number of shitty algorithms that probably won’t give you exactly what you want.
It’s what they had on reddit or even your bookmarks. You just tag what category they are and then get those categories or browse theirs.
Don’t pretty much all Social Media have a chronological „Following“ feed already? Methinks they’re just going to argue that switching to that feed is „turning off“ the „algorithm“, no?
Yes, though this law specifically requires that users can “having their default feed … opt out of algorithmically recommended content and instead see posts only from the friends and creators they choose to follow.”.
Basically all platforms inject other posts in your feed somewhere either as “recommendations” or just paid ads, and very few default to your subscriptions when you open an app.
They do? Where? In Netherlands?
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Automod removed my other post with proof for some reason but literally every social media platform has it. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Threads, even TikTok. I checked.
I wonder if its to late. Are people so addicted they will turn it back on after a few weeks?
Over fucking due.
This will have zero impact on the power of tech companies. Most people will just choose the algorithm, it’s just better. The only way to actually have impact is to allow people to know how their feed works and to change the algorithm.
Banning Social Media for Teens and THEN going and regulating how the social media companies work their algorithms.
That is like driving on a flat tire for a week and then saying “We should do something about fixing the flat tire” except you are the ones who flattened your tire on purpose in the first place.
Absolute MORONS!!!
Better late than never
OK, but this is shutting the stable doors after the horses got out kind of better, not “we needed this earlier and are getting it after some things went wrong” better.
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Ban all social media that isnt the fediverse. Decentralized and no algirithm. Seems solid to me.
Hmm, honestly. If you didn’t like it, just block it and replace.
This will work a lot better once everyone is on FOSS platforms and network effects are less of a problem.