Australia gears up for legislation to give users control over social media algorithms

The Australian government is set to publish draft laws requiring social media platforms to offer users an opt-out of personalised recommendation systems, marking a significant shift in online safety regulation amid political debates and concerns over youth wellbeing.

Australia’s government is preparing to publish draft legislation that would force major social media platforms to let users switch off personalised recommendation systems, broadening a regulatory push that has already included a ban on under-16s holding accounts. ABC News reported that an exposure draft of the long-trailed Digital Duty of Care is due as parliament returns this week, while Crikey said the plan was set to dominate the sitting days as Labor intensified its battle with large technology companies. In a separate article published on Monday, 7 September, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cast the measure as the next phase of the government’s online safety agenda. (abc.net.au)

The proposal goes beyond a simple settings tweak. According to ABC News, platforms would have to present users with pop-up prompts allowing them to remain on an algorithmic feed or move to a chronological-style stream showing material only from accounts they have chosen to follow. The Guardian reported that some advocates and Greens MPs want a stricter model still, under which platforms would need explicit consent before placing users into algorithmically ranked feeds. SBS said Chanel Contos’s Fix Our Feeds campaign has been arguing for linear feeds as the default, with algorithmic recommendations activated only if users choose them. (abc.net.au)

The draft is also expected to impose broader legal obligations on the companies behind those feeds. ABC reported that the duty would require platforms to identify and mitigate risks on their services and to prevent harmful content being shared. For adults, that would include illegal material such as illegal pornography. For under-18s, ABC said the government is considering roughly half a dozen additional categories of “psycho-social harm”, including body-image content and bullying. The same report said breaches could attract fines of more than A$100 million, while the eSafety Commissioner and approved independent researchers could use “sock puppets”, posing as children, to test what content is being served to young users. The policy architecture itself comes from a May issues paper published by the Department of Infrastructure, which said online services would be required to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms. (abc.net.au)

Ministers are presenting the reform as a safety obligation rather than a speech restriction. In an interview published on Monday, 7 September, Health Minister Mark Butler said it was “pretty unremarkable” to expect big technology companies to have a duty not to harm Australians, “particularly, frankly, young Australians”. Albanese used sharper political language in his own article, saying: “This is not about giving government control. It’s about giving people control.” He also linked the new bill to last year’s child-account ban, saying more than five million accounts had been removed or deactivated in Australia and that more than 20 countries had since taken similar action. (health.gov.au)

The politics, however, are already difficult. Opposition leader Angus Taylor told ABC’s News24 that the Coalition had not yet seen the legislation and was “deeply sceptical”, warning that the government could use it to “censor social media”. The Guardian reported that Taylor had also pointed to what he said was only a 4.4% reduction under the existing youth ban, arguing ministers should first prove that earlier measures work. SBS, meanwhile, cited University of Newcastle research showing that more than 80 per cent of 12-to-17-year-olds were still using social media after the December 2025 crackdown, giving critics fresh ammunition against Labor’s claim that its first round of reforms is taking hold. (abc.net.au)

Supporters of tougher intervention have tied the algorithm debate directly to gendered violence and youth wellbeing. SBS said the immediate backdrop to the announcement was Contos’s warning that boys and young men are being funnelled towards misogynistic “manosphere” content. Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite told News24’s Sunday Agenda: “Young Australians shouldn’t be exposed to violent behaviour that results in disrespect for women, that results in some of the shocking scenarios we have seen around online pornography, that’s producing some pretty devastating consequences for many Australian families.” Albanese made a similar case, arguing that harmful recommendation systems can push young men towards extremist and misogynistic voices. (sbs.com.au)

The official policy basis for the law is broader than social media feeds alone. The Department of Infrastructure said in May that a statutory review of the Online Safety Act 2021 had recommended a legislated duty of care for online services, and that the government’s framework had already been shaped by consultation carried out between late 2025 and early 2026. Albanese said this week’s companion legislation would also hand the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to gather evidence from platforms and would double the penalties facing companies that breach Australian law. Taken together, that suggests Canberra is trying to move from platform-specific restrictions towards a more general safety regime for digital services. (infrastructure.gov.au)

There is still some uncertainty over timing and final design. ABC and the Guardian both indicated that the exposure draft would appear this week as parliament reconvenes, while SBS said it was expected in the coming fortnight. That gap matters because the central argument is no longer whether algorithms shape what Australians see online, but whether the law should merely offer an off switch or require platforms to secure active consent before those systems are turned on at all. (abc.net.au)