Australia to Social Media: Fix Your Algorithms or Pay Up
Australia is tired of your doomscrolling habits and wants to force platforms to kill the infinite feed.
Australia is moving to pass a law that would let users opt out of algorithm-driven content. If you want to see only what your friends post—and not what some soulless machine thinks you want to see—the government wants to make that a reality. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claims this is about handing control back to people, not the state.
The bill is going after the "addictive" design features that keep us locked in, like infinite scrolling. More importantly, platforms could face fines exceeding $100 million if they fail to scrub their feeds of harmful garbage—think bullying, criminal content, and other nastiness targeting minors. The opposition is already calling it a "dangerous" overreach that threatens free speech, with some politicians worried that the government is essentially deciding what counts as harmful on the fly.
Governments are finally realizing that if they hit tech giants where it hurts—their bank accounts—the apps might actually start behaving.
Source: ABC News
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