The Australian government is considering new legislation that would allow users to opt out of social media recommender algorithms and implement a ban on violent pornography. The proposed digital duty of care bill aims to hold tech and AI companies accountable for online safety and the normalization of harmful content.
The move toward opt-in algorithms represents a significant shift from passive content consumption to active user consent, potentially forcing Meta and other platforms to re-engineer core engagement loops. By linking recommender systems to public health outcomes like sexual violence, the Australian government is moving beyond simple moderation toward structural oversight of AI-driven distribution. This regulatory approach aligns with global trends in the UK and US, signaling a coordinated effort to hold tech giants accountable for the downstream social effects of their automated curation. Watch for the upcoming consultation on the digital duty of care bill to see how specific AI safety standards are defined for video platforms.
Australia's push to regulate recommender algorithms sits within a broader global wave of platform accountability legislation targeting AI-driven content distribution. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety Act 2023 already requires platforms to assess risks posed by their recommendation systems, and Ofcom published its first set of codes of practice in March 2025 that mandate platforms to conduct risk assessments on how their algorithms amplify harmful content to minors, with enforcement powers including fines of up to 10% of global revenue. The European Union's Digital Services Act, which took full effect in February 2024, similarly requires very large online platforms to offer users at least one non-profiling-based recommendation option, a model that Australia's opt-in proposal extends further by making algorithmic curation the exception rather than the default. Meta, the most prominent platform affected, has already faced scrutiny under these frameworks; in April 2025, the European Commission opened formal proceedings against Meta under the DSA over concerns that Instagram and Facebook recommender systems expose minors to harmful content, marking one of the first enforcement actions targeting algorithmic design choices specifically.
On the business and compliance side, Australia's proposed digital duty of care bill would create a new legal standard requiring platforms to proactively identify and mitigate foreseeable harms from their design features, including recommender algorithms. This approach mirrors the UK's duty of care framework but goes further by explicitly naming algorithmic amplification as a regulated activity. Tanya Plibersek's announcement follows a pattern of escalating Australian regulatory action against tech platforms; in December 2024, Australia passed the Online Safety Amendment Act, becoming the first country to legislate a minimum age of 16 for social media access, a law that took effect in December 2025 and required platforms including Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat to implement age-verification systems. The cumulative effect of these measures is creating a compliance architecture that treats algorithmic design as a regulated product feature rather than an internal engineering decision, with potential penalties and enforcement mechanisms still being defined in the upcoming consultation.
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Add as preferred sourceFrom a technical and implementation standpoint, making social media algorithm opt-out raises significant questions about how platforms would serve content to users who decline algorithmic curation. Meta has acknowledged the feasibility of non-algorithmic feeds; in early 2025, Instagram launched a chronological feed option globally and tested a "quiet mode" that limits algorithmic suggestions for teen accounts, though these remain secondary to the default algorithmic experience. Research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate published in 2024 found that Instagram's recommender system served self-harm and eating-disorder content to new accounts within minutes of engagement signals, providing empirical grounding for regulators' concerns about amplification mechanics. The Australian proposal would effectively require platforms to demonstrate that their default recommendation systems do not normalize harmful content, shifting the burden of proof from regulators to platform engineering teams.
