US criticises Australia's proposed algorithm opt-out laws as 'censorship'
bbc.com
bbc.com
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).
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.
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.
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.
Seems more like, if they see something suspicious or are worried about it - dont go to your phone, just leave the situation as fast as possible. As usual, education and critical thinking is the answer.
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.
It seems unlikely that the toddler to be using a gun effectively though.
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."
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
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?
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'.
Those laws explicitly declare what they ban. This one doesn't.
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...
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.
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.)
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 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.
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.
America protects the speech of the rich and powerful but allows stoking division and outright propaganda. It hides a lot behind "it's not technically illegal but you'll lose your job if you say the wrong thing", or "you'll get arrested but if you're rich enough to afford a lawyer you might get charges dismissed"
Perhaps solve those problems before criticising other countries for fighting back in the war.
Calling democraticly elected people you dislike a "bureaucrat" is disingenuous
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
Trump has been not letting people in the country, kicking them out of schools and searching phones at borders to find out if they have made any posts against Jews.
That's nothing to do with the right wing and everything to do with the Jewish lobby. He has been attacking the right wing for the same reasons. Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, Majorie Green etc all have been attacked, investigated, fired for speaking against Israel.
Trump silences those against Israel while the left silences those against Men in Women's sports, bathrooms, gender surgery for toddlers. Also anyone who questions covid, diy and white men in general.
The right wing is the only place allowing to have free speech. And Fox News isn't considered right wing.
H. Christ almighty, you people sure do have an enormous victim complex.
I appreciate your willingness to debate the topic. People like you make HN an interesting place to spend time.
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.
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.
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.
Given that there's no rhyme, reason, or consistency to it, best to ignore nonsensical, provocative statements, keep calm, and carry on.
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.
Never mistake for bonhomie that which is adequately explained by money and self-interest
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
I'm going to reiterate for the third time, to break it down even further in a hope it clicks.
We have: 1. Predatory/addictive algorithms (A_bad). We don’t like those. 2. Old good user preferences-based algorithms (A_good). Those are fine. 3. Probably some other algorithms but let’s go with just two alternatives for simplicity’s sake, as extra (A_more) won’t affect the argument here.
Definition from the law (A_law) covers both (A_bad)+(A_good). As I already said twice, it’s overbroad.
You said “if (A_law) wouldn’t be bad there wouldn’t be an issue”. That is obviously true, because (A_law) contains (A_bad). What you said is true, and it doesn’t contradict what I said - that (A_law) containing (A_good) in addition to (A_bad) isn’t great and lawmakers should’ve done better.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not arguing that A_law = A_good (that’s not true, they’re not the same! but neither A_law = A_bad either, it's the fact that it's A+bad+A_good[+A_more] is the issue), or that A_bad isn’t bad, or that A_bad isn’t covered by the law, or anything like that. Your knowledge that A_bad is bad, is my knowledge too.
As for the second point, I provided a counterexample of how endless scroll can be a non-issue. If endless scroll can be a problem (no argument against that from me - yes, there are clear examples we all have seen) and endless scroll can be non-problematic too (my counterexample design), that, says endless scroll is not what’s problematic per se. That’s just simple propositional logic.
Endless scrolling can be a proxy/substitute for the actual issue if nothing better could be named, but I think a better target can be identified and pointed out.
In other words, all I’m unhappy about is that laws are poorly worded and loosely defined so they can potentially cause unnecessary collateral damage. All I’m saying is that lawmakers are missing the point and just vibe-legislate in the vicinity. They’re banning the thing they (and you, and I) see, but the way they do it kinda like how Plato defined what a man is. And I’m just plucking a chicken here.
If you see a logical flaw - please do point it out for me. I don’t see any.
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue
Endless scrolling aids, but isn’t what makes a system addictive. Continuous relevance gamble “maybe the next one is good, or the one after” is the actual driver, and “I stop at this page” is a weak stopper condition. Not negligible (as proven by testing) but not the fundamental piece.
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/design-for-continuous-e... - look for the slide 32.
Etsy ran A/B tests with and without endless scrolling. Same content source. Infinite scroll haven't produced any increased engagement: surprisingly, it decreased it - people searched less. Potential reason: it was a store, not a social media feed, the feed wasn't addictive in its nature (decreased relevancy, lower chances of finding something good buried down further and further) and the whole alternative pagination design didn't help at all. This is my interpretation, but c'mon - if you're appealing to the telemetry: here's the telemetry, how'd you explain it?
In the neighboring comment, I was mistaken in that it would still increase length of browsing a bit, turns out it was off-putting.
I'm not sure why you think this is a slam dunk. Fruity flavors increase the adoption of vaping because it tastes better, but that doesn't work when you apply it to broccoli. Doesn't mean we shouldn't regulate flavored vapes.
Vaping analogy is not perfect, as it doesn’t hold true in some aspects, but... Nobody makes vapes that go unpleasantly sour for a while after a fourth puff. But if they do we’d better not ban them from adding flavors, when the flavoring here does the right thing.
We’d still want to regulate vaping on other aspects (such as harm to health, which - unlike speech - doesn’t get protections), but that’s another, different story.
(Sigh) And what exactly does it show? What makes you think you interpret the statistics correctly?
It shows a correlation that suggests - at best - that certain design patterns decrease friction and increases duration of engagement, making system more captive. It does NOT show that those design patterns are captive (= are a problem) by themselves.
Have those mountains of telemetry ever included an experiment where the addictive component was intentionally not present or maybe even designed to be anti-addictive (next element becomes increasingly less likely to be interesting/relevant past some threshold, frustrating the viewer) but the endless scrolling remains, so we test on its presence alone? Ideally, with an engagement-optimized feed as a separate control.
I don't know of such experiments, so I cannot counter your point with a definitive proof. But your interpretation isn't a proof either - there are multiple factors and no control to tell them apart. Those mountains of telemetry didn't have a goal of isolating factors to determine their actual effect, they just had to optimize engagement, find the best combo that works.
If someone ran something like that - I'd love to hear about it, and what they show. I'm utterly confident (as someone who had dealt with various addictions) that it'll show endless scrolling would have mild effects at best (maybe just a bit longer engagement compared to classic pagination as telemetry suggests, but I expect it to pale in comparison to an actual addictive/engagement-increasing feed source logic).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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’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.
> 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.
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.
I wonder in what creative ways they'll maliciously conform.
Serious violation!
It's like freedom.equals(we don't like regulation at all)
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.
Which would play into all sorts of agendas.
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...
The Australian Prime Minister hates social media.
This is step two of a never ending assault.
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.
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.
Nice to know where that nerve is though. Other countries: pay attention!
Me: I want chrono timelines!
Australia: I want chrono timelines!
Trump: I DON'T!
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
Zuck? Advertisers?
Because if we're talking about users, they'll be given an option, not be forced.
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 would avoid Instagram.
Can we agree that these apps should be renamed antisocial media?