I am SO uncomfortable with the idea of handing images of my id over.

Unrelated to algorithms but I opened Roblox yesterday after not playing for a long while and I found that they’ll give you a ‘free item’ if you do an age check

Disgusting, coercive bullshit just so kids can give their biometric data to American companies. Funny how the eSafety Commission managed to completely forget about the privacy rights of children, let alone those of adults, just so they can rush through their age verification legislation like the world depended on it.

Exactly. I do believe that the algorithm does more damage than anything that age verification will address and it impacts all of us.

Age verification took away the need to regulate it so it's safe for kids. Now it's not safe for anyone.

Remember when people would post event flyers to facebook and everyone subscribed to the group would see it?

Now it's like trying to withdrawal your pay from a poker machine instead of an ATM.

This is the Labor party bringing it in, so you can bet the legislation will just-barely-sort-of do what it says on the tin.

That's what you get from centre-right governments...

This was my first thought as well.

The vast majority of users couldn't care less about "the algorithm", and probably think it's a good thing.

The people who need this aren't interested.

Will be able to turn off - meaning on by default. It should be off by default.

Interesting how a vast majority of the right wingers I know, including my dad, don’t research anything at all, and only rely on algorithms to give them right wing rage bait.

My dad for example said to me that “all these foreign exchange students are getting $50k grants for entering the country on MY taxes” after hearing it on TikTok, then I did the most minor research and found that it’s only for one of the states (I think either QLD or WA, can’t remember which though). I rebutted his claim by stating that it’s state legislation and has no basis in taking other state taxes nor much federal tax, and he gave me a long winded explanation basically just to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Apparently getting force fed slop on TikTok and instagram reels makes you a prolific researcher, while actually researching makes you a bum or something.

They can't, if they do they're calling out the social media sites for purposely targeting addictive algorithms and then this bandaid fix will be noticed for the bandaid fix it is. Most people don't know social media uses specifically designed to be addictive algorithms. What happens if everyone knows that. So they flatten out the language.

They want to make the Feed without algorithms so bad that nobody will use it.

Social media companies want regulation to keep out competition while allowing them to keep the ads and algorithm flowing as is today as much as possible

Try this.

Yea, I don't understand people who don't use their subscriptions.

If you've still got cookies on, the related videos are based in your algo. If you open a new private window and watch a few videos your front page will update to reflect what you've seen.

I think the general idea is to go from a 'weighted' feed showing promoted or 'trending content' to a chronological feed showing newest to oldest of your friends posts.
Thats the way they have been framing it from what i have heard on the news.

The easiest way this could work would be allowing you to group your subscriptions manually or automatically tagging them into preset categories (which would still use AI technically). It's not really feasible to create an endless number of shitty algorithms that probably won't give you exactly what you want.

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.

It makes good headlines

Algorithm off implies a lot of parameters about the user which could be disabled. Right now there are thousands of parameters being used to curate content to you. With it off you could get true random content which in theory should allow for you to not get sucked into the dopamine trap.

Read the article.

That would kill the Fediverse and other alternatives too, though, because they wouldn't be allowed to exist by said regulations. What you're suggesting is gonna result in vendor lock-in by making it impossible for smaller competition to comply.

Yes, though this law specifically requires that users can "having their default feed ... opt out of algorithmically ​recommended content and instead see posts only from the friends and creators they ⁠choose to follow.".

Basically all platforms inject other posts in your feed somewhere either as "recommendations" or just paid ads, and very few default to your subscriptions when you open an app.

They do? Where? In Netherlands?

Better late than never

How do you suggest we ban all teens for social media? We already tried that, and the result was teens easily bypassing the verification through using game avatars, and pedophiles knowing exactly where to find the kids. It’s moronic and inefficient to keep making failed attempts at banning teens from social media.

Teens will always find a way to flock back to social media, and frankly social media companies may pull out of Australia if the eSafety commission attempts to brute force removing teens, because thats a substantial part of their market. Choosing to instead add a toggle for algorithms is heaps more constructive and be more effective.

The whole age verification thing was partly started BECAUSE of algorithms (but also pedophiles pretending that they want the kids to be safe), so isn’t it logical to make a simple way to allow those who don’t want to be force fed targeted slop to turn it off?

This will work a lot better once everyone is on FOSS platforms and network effects are less of a problem.