Australia's Proposed Answer to Algorithmic Feeds: an Off Switch

Australia has proposed a switch that would force social media platforms to let users turn off recommended content (S9E1). The interesting part is what kind of regulation that is. It bans no post, no topic and no poster; it aims at the recommendation layer itself. A platform can obey every existing content rule and still decide, opaquely, what a user is handed next.

An off switch does not change how the recommender works. It gives the user a way out of the feed the recommender builds, which is both a modest remedy and a pointed admission: if the recommendation engine were simply a neutral mirror of what users wanted, no escape hatch would be needed.