Many of us enjoy our feeds. They can take us to niche communities with people who like the same music, TV shows, sport, art and more. But alongside those positive connections, something far more dangerous is happening. Today, the same algorithms that curate our favourite content are also being weaponised. Research is showing that boys and men are exposed to extreme misogynistic material within minutes of signing up to social media platforms. These algorithms are engineered to exploit their fears and insecurities. This isn’t a small problem - misogynistic attitudes are linked to support for violence against women.

Yes, Australia’s National Crisis of gender-based violence is worsening. Teenage boys are now the most likely perpetrators of child sexual abuse, the number of reported sexual assault victim-survivors reached an all-time high, image-based abuse is at record highs and sexism and harassment in schools is growing at alarming rates. To address the factors fuelling this crisis, the Government should better regulate the algorithms promoting extreme misogynistic ideology to young men and boys. At the very least, we should be given a choice: to opt in, and turn our algorithms on and off at will.

Social media platforms are designed to keep us online for as long as possible. The longer we scroll, the more advertisements we see and the more money the platforms make. To achieve this, platforms use algorithms that prioritise content most likely to capture and hold our attention. The result? Content that sparks strong emotions, like outrage, fear, excitement, anger, spreads the fastest. The more extreme the reaction, the more “successful” the post becomes. Extreme misogynistic content often provokes exactly those reactions. That’s why it’s amplified.

You can still support this policy but opt-in for an algorithmically-driven social media feed. Our intent is to give Australians options.

Unfortunately, there are many forms of harmful content circulated by social media algorithms. For instance, your feed may not be misogynistic, but you still may want to turn off your algorithm on socials to prevent exposure to eating disorder or self harm content, mis/disinformation, other forms of hateful content, or just to give yourself a break from the doom-scroll. If you're someone who loves your feed, then it can simply be a helpful option to spend less time on your phone, if you want to use it.

No. This policy is all about choice, informed consent and safety. Some of us may experience more harm on some platforms than others. So, if you find one of your feeds to be less harmful, you can scroll on and opt-in. But if you're seeing content that you think is harmful, you can choose to turn it off.

In the European Union, where similar policies are in place, the Explore pages show content as usual. But instead of the content being personalised to you, it would show generally popular videos at the time.

Yes. This policy is about choice, informed and ongoing consent and ultimately, making social media safer by design.

This policy will stop the “accidental” radicalisation of young men and boys. It acknowledges that often, young men and boys aren’t seeking out misogynistic content - they’re being targeted by the platforms with this radical content. If more people are given the option to use social media without recommender algorithms, we expect less people will be exposed to harmful, misogynistic content. It’s not a silver bullet but it should make online platforms safer by design to reduce rates of misogyny.

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Technically speaking, no. These are protocol, rules driven businesses. There aren’t the same hurdles for implementation, so you can change them easily. And before algorithms, there were chronological feeds; so, it’s really just returning to that initial protocol.

Recommender systems prioritise content or make personalised content suggestions to users. They’re driven by underlying algorithms.
Social media algorithms are collections of rules, signals, and data that govern how content is filtered, ranked, selected, and recommended to users on social media platforms. They determine the priority and display order of content for each user based on various factors, including user behaviour and engagement. The issue with algorithms comes about when they create concentrated neighbourhoods of harmful content.

Currently, some apps allow you to customise your feeds in different ways. Some give you the option to turn off personalised feeds. However, they don’t go all the way: personalised feeds still remain the default on social media, feeds often easily revert back to personalisation if you leave the app, and ultimately, there’s no legislation that requires platforms to have an opt-in option, so most don’t offer this option as the default.

If you turn off your algorithm, you can still be advertised to. However, the ads will be less personalised and targeted.