Social media platforms operating in Australia would have to ask users whether they want an algorithm at all, under Digital Duty of Care laws the federal government is releasing in exposure draft this week. Users who decline would receive a chronological feed of accounts they follow instead of ranked, recommended content, ABC News reported.
Breaches would carry fines above $100 million. The obligation would be delivered through a pop-up prompt rather than a setting buried in a menu – a detail that determines whether the measure changes anything.
What the draft requires
The framework goes further than the feed switch. Platforms would be required to identify and mitigate risks arising from their own services, with heightened obligations toward users under 18 covering what the draft calls psycho-social harm, including content related to body image and bullying.
That structure – a general duty plus specific protections for minors – follows the model of the United Kingdom’s online safety regime rather than the prescriptive content rules earlier Australian proposals leaned on. It asks platforms to demonstrate that they assessed a risk and did something about it, rather than listing prohibited material.
Enforcement with undercover accounts
The provision that will draw the most attention from industry is investigative. The eSafety Commissioner, along with registered independent researchers, would be empowered to monitor platforms using “sock puppets” – undercover accounts posing as children.
That is a meaningful shift in how compliance gets tested. Regulators currently rely largely on platform self-reporting and on transparency documents the companies themselves compile. An account that presents as a 14-year-old and records what the recommendation system actually serves it produces evidence about system behavior, not company disclosure. Independent researchers have run these experiments unofficially for years, generally in breach of platform terms of service; the draft would give the method legal standing.
A politically split reception
The proposal has drawn criticism from opposite directions, which is the clearest indication of where the debate sits.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor questioned the government’s motives: “I am deeply sceptical. I fear that this is going to be an attempt by the government to censor social media.” Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson made a different argument, contending that algorithms “reflect back to people often the content they want to see” – a defence of ranking as a service to users rather than a manipulation of them.
Yet the Coalition has not been uniform on the point. Shadow Communications Minister Sarah Henderson has previously described the “insidious psychological manipulation” of children through algorithmic feeds, a characterisation closer to the government’s premise than to her colleagues’ objections.
From the crossbench, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wants the measure strengthened into an opt-in requirement, meaning algorithmic ranking would be off until a user actively turned it on. Algorithms, she said, are “designed to keep them scrolling and consuming toxic content.”
Why opt-out versus opt-in matters
The gap between those two positions is the entire practical question. Defaults determine outcomes at scale: on any consumer product, the overwhelming majority of users accept whatever the setting arrives as. An opt-out regime with a pop-up will move some users to chronological feeds and leave most on ranked ones. An opt-in regime would invert the platform’s core product for everyone who does not act.
That is also why the pop-up requirement matters more than it sounds. A choice presented once, prominently, at a moment when the user is paying attention produces a different distribution of outcomes than the same choice available six taps deep in a settings menu – which is where most platforms have placed their chronological options for years.
The next test case
Australia has become the jurisdiction where platform regulation gets tried first, from the news bargaining code to the under-16 account restrictions that took effect at the end of 2025. Each time, the industry has warned of unworkable compliance and each time it has complied, because the market is large enough not to exit and small enough to serve as an experiment.
The algorithm opt-out extends that pattern into new territory. Previous rules governed who may hold an account and what may be published. This one reaches into how content is ordered – the mechanism at the centre of these companies’ economics. What the exposure draft settles is whether that ordering remains something users must accept, or something they are asked about.
