A new bill would allow Australians to opt out of social media algorithms, the BBC reports.
Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells said the new laws would ensure that an industry that has never done so would have to provide basic protections to users. She said tech giants such as Meta, Google and TikTok would face significant fines if they did not give users the option to opt out.
Some opposition politicians have criticised the proposal. Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor said he was sceptical, saying the law amounted to censorship.
Wells said the government would consult experts to decide whether social media users should be able to opt out of or opt in to the use of algorithms that determine what content is served online. This means that, as with the social media ban for children, the government wants to introduce the law before it has fully figured out how it will work. Wells told the ABC on the 7th of September that she wanted to give Australians more control over what they see on their social media feeds. She said she knew many Australians valued the algorithms for both entertainment and convenience (such as seeing more content and ads from businesses nearby), and
many would choose to continue using them, but it was important that big tech companies gave them a choice
and respected the choices they made. The minister added that tech giants were not protected species and should offer basic safety standards to their customers.
The minister also acknowledged that so far no tech company had been fined for failing to enforce the social media ban. Research shows that the majority of children under 16 who used social media before the ban was introduced last December are still using it.
Some opposition politicians have said they support the idea in principle, while others have said it amounts to an attempt to restrict freedom of expression. Taylor told News24 that she fears this is the government’s attempt to censor social media and that it should first fix the social media ban law.
Wales, for her part, said it is not about censorship. It is about identifying risks.
The bill is expected to be tabled in the coming days. In addition to the issue of algorithms, it would oblige platforms to stop the distribution of harmful content, such as illegal pornography or videos promoting eating disorders.
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