Australians will be able to switch off social media algorithms under planned legislation

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.