I think this is a nice idea, but three koala dollars says that in a year we find out most Australians switched back to the dopamine feed after a day or two. Nice to have the choice, though.
The USA has a choice between two parties - democrat or republican. China only has one party, Russian has (in principle) one party and North Korea only has one dictator.
So if these places got a second party or dictator, it would be a 50% improvement.
The war on drugs was a failure, and the most successful cases (other than harsh punishments while avoiding massive drug use in the first place, like Singapore) involve legalization.
I talked about this in my blog post [1]. I didn't expect regulators to pay attention to the issue anytime soon—let alone move against it. So kudos to the Australian government. Enough with the free-speech and free-market rhetoric: algorithmic feeds are actively poisoning our minds and should be regulated as strictly as possible.
> The issue is that much of the problematic content doesn’t violate any law but still is poison that shouldn’t be on anyone’s feed. The easiest example is painting feminism as some evil propaganda against men, and how women’s place in the kitchen is natural order of things. Such views have gained steam in the recent times purely because of social media (algorithms).
> The ideal regulation would be to ban or heavily regulate algorithmic feeds. If you don’t follow someone, or a page, or an interest, there’s no reason for you to get that stuff on your timeline. Only things that should be shown is what you explicitly choose. And if it does, it should be easy enough to nuke it from your timeline.
This reminds me of the YouTube creator Technology Connections trying to engage with people on bluesky, which already provides feed customization and even lets you write code to build your own feed algorithms. He loosely coined the term "algorithmic complacency" to explain how users didn't like bluesky specifically because they had to actually think about who or what they wanted to follow, his fear being that especially young people would rather be served slop than decide for themselves what content they want to see.
Maybe he's right, but there are way more issues with Bluesky that affect user retention. For example the app seems to love logging users out if they have intermittent Internet or are using a VPN, or just because the app feels like it. It's an insane bug or security stance.
Meanwhile, Setlog is gaining popularity in east Asia, which definitely indicates there is some demand for friend-only social media. I think many Discord users are basically using Discord like that too. Giving users the choice is the right move.
I’d prefer similar to Doctorow, that governments simply make scraping and republishing (anything that anyone who consents can access) explicitly legal, then alternate frontends may appear with their own algorithms.
Forcing APIs maybe wouldn't be bad, but shouldn't be necessary. It would be hard to enforce and the company could release convoluted APIs, which would be harder to regulate. Meanwhile, scrapers can publish a decent API.
The feed options sound good in principle, although I expect the implementation to be deliberately hobbled. I've tried Facebook's existing (well hidden) chronological feed and it turns out there's so much spam in local groups that I found it unusable.
The bigger issue is the toxic "papers please" identity verification will result in a lot fewer "Australians" on the internet, who will now show up from various VPN endpoint countries, so presumably won't get the algorithm option.
Nowadays you can filter out spam from your feed if you can roughly formulate what you want to see there (or DON'T want to see)
E.g I filter my RSS feed using a small tool I built for myself. It doesn't support Facebook, but maybe you can find it useful: https://knoless.app
I deleted all of my history and "paused" history tracking. Then I reloaded https://www.youtube.com.
My expectation: A feed of the pages I'm subscribed to.
My experience: A blank page which just says "Your watch history is off / You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you. [Learn more] / [Update Settings]".
Hilariously, it is exactly the same - in glorious 4K - on the YouTube app on my TV.
This is deliberately fucked in order force users into the algorithm.
> You can already do this on youtube by not allowing history.
And what a bliss that is! I love it how YouTube thinks it’s punishing me by turning off the home page recommendations if you disable history (it didn’t always do that) while it’s in fact a favour. In my country (and I assume most/every country), the default home feed is such a cesspool of vomit-inducing clickbait garbage that it boils my blood to even glance at it.
> That's great however after seeing their feed being empty people will switch back.
But yes, I have no illusion that everyone shares my aversion. Removing control from the companies will hopefully have some impact, though.
Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them? The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.
Maybe giving people what they want is not great for them. I am ok with this argument. But then "giving people control" won't change anything. Vast majority of users would rather put up with shocking (to me) levels of annoyance and expense just not to configure/fix anything themselves.
Most of my crowd seem to have left them behind because they went from a tool where I could see what my people were up to, and maybe the odd update about a band or a business I was interested in, to "Here are 50 things you have no interest in and by the way I deprioritised what your actual friends post"
Should government be legislating that social networks work the way I want? Very good question, probably not. Am I still happy with this change? Broadly yes.
Social media and other such things were gaining explosively popularity (and addiction) long before 'the algorithm' was even a thought. Even in the pre-social media age, newsgroups and other such social venues had a similar effect, but relatively low reach because it wasn't mainstream and there were some significant barriers to getting started.
I'd look at trends as well. There is a time when Facebook was hot and trendy, whereas now it's a place for people's parents and grandparents - while all the cool kids are on Instagram. I think it's safe to say that the shift there was more social than technological. Younger generations wanted their own thing.
And I'd see TikTok as being in the same vein there, especially as YouTube has gradually shifted away from being YouTube and more like CorpoTube. But there weren't any especially viable stateside competitors. The few that did exist basically just tried to be YouTube, but with less content and worse CDN networks.
The first social networks were actually social (ie relating to friends), algos came later, to better exploit attention for ads.
When twitter changed its feeds it had to force people into the new style feed by giving them a choice but wiping their choice every time they opened the app and forcing the algorithmic slop feed.
This is long overdue and I hope all countries adopt it. It should be the default and if people want to consume slop they will always have a choice to do so.
I came here expecting an apologia for the manipulative feeds of big tech, and found one at the top. If that’s not what you intended, perhaps consider that you’re acting as a useful idiot for them.
Every social media is popular because of the network effect. Even TikTok launched just under a decade ago, grew with help from China’s government and cultural isolation, and only became “mainstream” (in 2020) after already having hundreds of millions of users including celebrities like Justin Bieber.
> Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that cigarettes are popular despite the content nicotine and not because of them? The reason Malboro blew up is because it gives you a surge of dopamine without having to do anything for it.
Yes - TikTok is popular, precicely because the algorithmic feeds are designed to be addictive. They show content, not because its good, not because its what you ask for, but because its exactly what will keep your eyes glued to the screen.
I would assume that the majority of users would prefer a Facebook experience that showed them just the friends and family they follow, and nothing else.
Before it was social “media” Facebook was a great way to see friends & families updates in a chronological way with very little clutter. Then people began soapboxing, then came the ads, then all the random “interests” they assign to you and it’s completely useless now.
TikTok, IG etc are a little different as they’re actually media streams but I wanted to say that about Facebook - give me what I want on Facebook and it would be a wonderful service.
I cannot relate to liking Facebook because I never did in any of its eras but once upon a time newspaper was a competitive information technology. People would read them on the subway and at the beach. I did this, I am old enough to remember "saving" articles to read when I took a magazine into the sauna.
The same happened to algo-less social media sites.
They don't. They want to let people opt out of social media feeds for the same reason they currently let gamblers self-exclude[0].
Politicians do not believe that casinos are popular despite the gambling and they do not believe that social media is popular despite the feed. They want to protect the general public from addiction.
It's all fun and games when you download Tiktok. Then one day you're scrolling while your kid is in the pool, the lifeguard jumps in to save her, you realise you would have let your daughter die because you're addicted to watching dance videos on the fent rectangle, and you decide to quit.
The thing that doesn't get written about is that precisely the same situation occurs for women. Decentering men is equivalent to MGTOW. The torrent of misandrist content on social media utterly dwarfs the amount of 'red pill' / manosphere or similar content. It's mainstream in a way outright misogynistic content hasn't been for decades. Worse still, it's almost impossible to have this discussion without the immediate repost of 'but actually men are terrible', or some other such nonsense.
There's a very old fashioned 'battle of the sexes' being pushed by algorithmic content, and it's having visible toxic effects on the capacity of people to socialise, form relationships, engage in social reproduction and function normally in society. There's a vast torrent of such poison aimed at both men and women. Pretending it's only occurring to men, or that only men are being radicalised, is refusing to engage with the problem.
The comments section of literally every mainstream video on instagram reels, tiktok and the like that in any way touches on gender, masculinity, femininity etc - isn't dominated by misogynistic comments and hasn't been for years. But rather thousands of 'not all men, but always a man', 'yaas goddess', 'men aren't lonely enough', and countless other shibboleths.
The normalisation of FLINTA only spaces (and accommodation) and the like offline has brought these dynamics into the real world in ways that further isolate and dehumanise.
This has always been my issue with these causes that claim to promote equality. If your way of promoting equality and inclusion excludes a whole gender, you're doing something wrong.
The idea of decentering men and the manosphere are so wildly different in goal, tone, and motivation that I can't seriously believe you think they're equivalent. Nevermind the vast over-inflation of your perceived "torrent" of this content
The fact that you can't perceive the equivalence is instructive. Group A generalises individual issues with members of Group B and forms an ideology of blame and exclusion. But Group B was evil all along, cry Group A. Group B have become deranged cry Group A. And so it goes.
I don't see much issue with FLINTA spaces, other than it still failing at the ye old question "how to easily filter bad people from people". The options for regular spaces are still HUGE, some people deciding to have FLINTA and apparently enjoying themselves is a plus.
Having lived in Berlin, FLINTA only apartments are a significant minority (up to half) of spaces seeking housemates through publicaly available groups on platforms like Facebook (as opposed to websites like WG-Gesucht). So there's quite a significant material impact. Living in Ireland currently, more and more arts workshops, funding opportunities, arts mixers and the like are FLINTA only or FLINTA preferred (terminology can differ). Ditto club nights, but that's whatever. This is a real and growing issue if you're not a member of the approved groups, but have to function in those environments.
Even if someone was crazy about facebook, there was a limited amount of content they could see from my friends, you'd be done watching everything in 10 minutes. The levels of addiction we see today on TikTok, IG, etc were not even possible.
These algorithms can be incredibly predatory towards people who engage with content they don't want to see, because they're optimizing for engagement, not enjoyment.
Engagement does not correlate with want. I know people who hated every second of their time on TikTok because it kept showing them only the most awful and traumatic shit, but for the same reason, they couldn't just leave because the reason it was traumatic was because they felt terribly guilty to leave it alone. They were shown all sorts of threats about how terrible of a person they'd be if they didn't like, share, comment, etc. and they were scared out of their mind into having to do it, and that only taught the algorithm to show them more -- to seek out only the worst, most horrible and awful and traumatic content to show them because that scared them the most and compelled them the most. It's awful, horrible, sure they shouldn't have been on TikTok at all (no one should), but it shouldn't have done that to them either
Kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Personally I think recommendation algorithms should be more powerful, customizable, and transparent. Currently they just make too many assumptions about the user without providing mechanisms to directly assign positive and negative weights to categories of content, which is what makes them unusable as a tool.
> Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them?
Some are, some not. But the motivation is the harm of algo-feeds, the potential for manipulations from bad actors.
> The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.
That's more of a delusion, it does not shows you what you want, but what engages you, which just happen often enough to be something you want.
> But then "giving people control" won't change anything.
Probably true, but feeds like are tapping into addiction-mechanisms, returning control can help to regulate this, and prevents at least lowers the harm.
Interesting scenarios that could happen in next few years
* American internet companies start to make the judgement that supporting EU/ANZ countries with difficult legal/tax requirements is a net cost and stop doing it, just IP-blocking those countries for the lowest legal risk
* Alternatively, American govt takes the position of "American companies don't have to follow the laws of random countries just because they accept IP packets from those countries". American companies eliminate their official business presence in onerous legal regimes but keep serving users there
* If above happens, this forces the resolution of the question "how does internet jurisdiction work across borders if USA doesn't play along", and a plausible answer is that internet messages start to be treated like physical imports and nation-level internet censorship moves under the purview of customs agencies
The globally routable internet is a very special and valuable thing, but it's a historical aberration and I suspect not very stable long-term. Even today, with the internet way more locked down than 20 years ago, it's still extremely libertarian compared to almost any other economically significant venue. In equilibrium, the state will demand its cut
> American internet companies start to make the judgement that supporting EU/ANZ countries with difficult legal/tax requirements is a net cost and stop doing it, just IP-blocking those countries for the lowest legal risk
Productivity spikes, youth mental health issues trend downwards and the nutcase right-wing parties struggle to maintain momentum.
> * Alternatively, American govt takes the position of "American companies don't have to follow the laws of random countries just because they accept IP packets from those countries". American companies eliminate their official business presence in onerous legal regimes but keep serving users there
Why would they do that? If they can't have a local business presence then they can't book local advertisers.
Which directly cuts any revenue they would get from the enterprise.
None of these companies need to have local business presences: they do because otherwise you can't get revenue from users in that nationality.
Yes, but the value of local presence is only the marginal value of the local advertisers over foreign ones. It's not all the revenue from the country, and it can be possible to be not worth having a local presence but still worth operating from offshore.
I don't think this goes nearly far enough, and is another example of our government latching onto a juicy trending topic and doing the bare minimum to make a positive sounding news byte out of. This should be an opt-in model for algorithmically driven content, infinite scrolling, etc. An opt out model just feels like they're compromising for the benefit of industry lobbyists on the issue.
With Facebook, people reported not being able to see their spouses' posts. They were "Married" on Facebook, but the feed just shoved things into their faces they didn't want. It would even edit posts when you went to their pages (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719)
Facebook already has a "friends only" feed. It's the only thing I still use, and unfortunately it's cluttered with events that people I knew 15 years ago are going to this weekend, but it's waaaay better than the default feed which is just a slop cannon.
Red herring, you've linked to a conservative leaning sub community posting a source that is known to be generally inaccurate.
This is about legislation penalizing social media companies for shoving algorithmic slop down the throats of consumers.
But if we want to introduce political figures and their thoughts on social media; the traditional opposition party is lead by this man - someone willing to manipulate the public with social media.
The damage is already done for most people who already use it. Whenever I go to a restaurant and see friends, families, and couples together, I feel sad that instead of talking to each other, they’re all watching TikToks or reels. On a bus or train, barely one or two people are actually doing something other than watching something online.
At least, hopefully, this rule helps future generations. People’s brains are so addicted that they can’t even focus for 10 minutes straight. On top of that, I see moms giving their toddlers mobile phones while they eat or whenever they need to get something done. People should really start considering how social media affects us in the long term.
I treasure my memories of being on subways and busses and getting lost in thought while staring out the windows, yeah. I mean, people have done this for basically all of human history (okay walking or something, not on a train, but, yeah). It's not a bad thing to have some time with just your senses existing in the world.
I read but on my phone or ebook reader and have done so for nearly 20 years. Especially since mass market paperbacks were replaced by larger ones that do not fit in my pocket or bookshelves.
I am in England – It is considered very odd to talk to strangers on a train or bus
I would say it's pretty common to talk to strangers on the train in England. I could just be the "Northerner terrifying Londoners by saying Hello" though. I do know not to start a conversation with a stranger on the tube.
I think it depends on the train journey personally. I'd never dream of striking up a conversation on the Tube or a busy commuter line; personally I'm the definition of 'not a morning person' so I've no social battery to spare in those circumstances. On the other hand I quite like a chat when I'm not in a hurry or it's not the morning, makes the time go faster.
Mind you most of the talk seems to be along the lines of 'GWR couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery' these days.
Thinking. Taking notes, ideally on a piece of paper. Relaxing. Talking to strangers. And yes, self-analysing. Staring in the window, maybe not so much.
Read, knitting/crochet, sleep, listen to music, play games (eg. emulator + pokemon games), study, read a newspaper, do crosswords, play chess online, watch a movie, listen to a podcast, learn a language, talk to other non-scrolling people, and yes, you can also stare outside, daydream or self-analyze, or even do nothing. Just a few decades ago we had a lot of dead times, it's not that crazy to pass an hour without having anything to do.
A lot of those suggestions mean staring at a phone or smilar device and a bystander like ggp might not be able to tell them apart from looking at social media.
Comments like this always ignore the fact that in the olden days before phones, a majority of people read newspapers or books and busybody news columnists bemoaned how everyone was lost in their media instead of socializing.
Literally nothing has changed in the past century other than the variety of idle tasks one can keep in their pocket. People chose to not engage then exactly the same as they do now.
Social media companies are also telling you what to do in your free time- they're just doing it in a much more subtle, pernicious way that goes straight to our dopamine pathways.
Believe it or not many people actually read news and books on their phones.
I think there a lot of survivorship bias in this observation, where the thing you’re most likely to see people watching is the thing that’s most flashy.
Yes and public transport isn't exactly a great environment for interacting with your friends - either its already loud or you're going to annoy other passengers.
I kind of agree, but I will push back just to work through my conflicted feelings. In America 50% of people basically can't read. I think the official stat is 48% read at or BELOW a 6th grade level. The average American reads 0 books a year, shamefully myself included. Especially post covid, there is a serious degradation in social skills and using a phone instantly makes people more comfortable and less likely to socialize. The mobile gaming industry is 148B this year.
All that is to say, I don't think this forum is indicative of wider behavior AND smart people definitely inflate the value of "work" and "productivity" they do on their phone. We will never know unless we get Apple data, but I suspect a phone might be like 90% entertainment and 5% communication for most people. Maybe 5% is semi-productive work email, reading an article, etc.
I guess I am not sure if it matters where their attention goes. Although, it might be a bit of selective memory in how social people were before phones.
Do people really ignore family and do completely separate things on their devices right next to each other?? Usually when I'm next to someone, I'm using my device to look up things related to the conversation, just like how I'd use a search engine during an internet discussion. I can't imagine just sitting around watching shorts right next to someone during a family gathering.
There isn't any need to "look things up related to the conversation", and if that is seen as acceptable then that itself is a sign of how things have changed, and how addicted we all are to information.
I dunno, to me it feels kind of like pulling a book off the shelf to double-check something from there. It's just, you know, digital instead. It's definitely something that's been acceptable to some kinds of people even before devices, but of course it's not for everybody. Some people prefer to say "I don't know", leave the conversation, and then come back later (or not) after they've studied up. I like to get to the bottom of it on the spot, but that's probably my ADHD. (potentially also other things too)
Instead of spending 45 minuter discussing back and forth whether Tim Burton is still alive, we can take five seconds to look it up, and then move on to more interesting topics.
Not in my family or extended family. But you can see examples of this all the time when eating out. So many young couples sit at a table at a restaurant, get out their phones and scroll away, occasionally showing their partner something they enjoyed. It's rare to see them talk more than a few words on what is presumably a date night.
Well, I don't watch shorts... but I do open my phone and read HN sometimes, when I don't want to actively participate in the (current) conversation. Which also shows that "curated" feeds will not solve this particular problem of interesting content on phones distracting one from boring family and friends.
> instead of talking to each other, they’re all watching TikToks or reels.
There's only so much to talk about, and if they're doing that, they've probably already said all there is to say. I'm glad we have something to do now besides make awkward trivial banter or sit in awkward silence.
"The Albanese Government is taking the next step following its world leading social media age ban to ensure Australians have more choice online...." - Me thinking "What the heck? What Albanese government has to do with Australians? Are they under the occupation? Albanian occupation?!"
Thats part of the premise, we don't need to invent new technologies when email/rss are already self curated / federated.
The missing piece is discovery.
Which is why in addition to allowing you to aggregate internal/external feeds into one place, each instance also shares each external feed its users have subscribed too, and each user can share who they read (like a blog roll).
Wouldn't the better way be is to make social media open? i.e. anyone can generate their own algorithm or chose from others who created them. I see that the social media companies could implement these requirements in the worse possible way to ensure that they opt right back in to "choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm"
It's unclear whether this legislation will require giving users the choice of the sort order. That's one of the tricks exploitative social networks use, selective prioritization of ragebait and other content that encourages "engagement". If you have the choice of strict chronological order, that removes a lot of the hold the networks have over you.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 10.0 ms ] threadI wouldnt be surprised if most people opt back in. But its better than an outright ban.
“Drug dealers are now required to give their customers the option to purchase salad instead of cocaine”.
The USA has a choice between two parties - democrat or republican. China only has one party, Russian has (in principle) one party and North Korea only has one dictator.
So if these places got a second party or dictator, it would be a 50% improvement.
Continues to be. It’s not over; it has been going on for over half a century, and counting.
How was it that Toby Ziegler (The West Wing) put it? “Since it never ends and no one ever wins, maybe we should stop calling it a war”?
"Albanese" is the second name of the Australian Prime Minister
In Albania, Albania is called Shqipëria.
> The issue is that much of the problematic content doesn’t violate any law but still is poison that shouldn’t be on anyone’s feed. The easiest example is painting feminism as some evil propaganda against men, and how women’s place in the kitchen is natural order of things. Such views have gained steam in the recent times purely because of social media (algorithms).
> The ideal regulation would be to ban or heavily regulate algorithmic feeds. If you don’t follow someone, or a page, or an interest, there’s no reason for you to get that stuff on your timeline. Only things that should be shown is what you explicitly choose. And if it does, it should be easy enough to nuke it from your timeline.
[1]: https://shubhamjain.co/2026/02/25/algorithmic-feeds-need-to-...
https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
Meanwhile, Setlog is gaining popularity in east Asia, which definitely indicates there is some demand for friend-only social media. I think many Discord users are basically using Discord like that too. Giving users the choice is the right move.
The bigger issue is the toxic "papers please" identity verification will result in a lot fewer "Australians" on the internet, who will now show up from various VPN endpoint countries, so presumably won't get the algorithm option.
I deleted all of my history and "paused" history tracking. Then I reloaded https://www.youtube.com.
My expectation: A feed of the pages I'm subscribed to.
My experience: A blank page which just says "Your watch history is off / You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you. [Learn more] / [Update Settings]".
Hilariously, it is exactly the same - in glorious 4K - on the YouTube app on my TV.
This is deliberately fucked in order force users into the algorithm.
And what a bliss that is! I love it how YouTube thinks it’s punishing me by turning off the home page recommendations if you disable history (it didn’t always do that) while it’s in fact a favour. In my country (and I assume most/every country), the default home feed is such a cesspool of vomit-inducing clickbait garbage that it boils my blood to even glance at it.
> That's great however after seeing their feed being empty people will switch back.
But yes, I have no illusion that everyone shares my aversion. Removing control from the companies will hopefully have some impact, though.
Theres alot of stuff turning up in my feeds lately that i'd rather not see.
No such feature in the other socials. Open the feed, you could see toxic content from an account you never followed thanks to the algorithm...
Maybe giving people what they want is not great for them. I am ok with this argument. But then "giving people control" won't change anything. Vast majority of users would rather put up with shocking (to me) levels of annoyance and expense just not to configure/fix anything themselves.
Most of my crowd seem to have left them behind because they went from a tool where I could see what my people were up to, and maybe the odd update about a band or a business I was interested in, to "Here are 50 things you have no interest in and by the way I deprioritised what your actual friends post"
Should government be legislating that social networks work the way I want? Very good question, probably not. Am I still happy with this change? Broadly yes.
I'd look at trends as well. There is a time when Facebook was hot and trendy, whereas now it's a place for people's parents and grandparents - while all the cool kids are on Instagram. I think it's safe to say that the shift there was more social than technological. Younger generations wanted their own thing.
And I'd see TikTok as being in the same vein there, especially as YouTube has gradually shifted away from being YouTube and more like CorpoTube. But there weren't any especially viable stateside competitors. The few that did exist basically just tried to be YouTube, but with less content and worse CDN networks.
No other place is as convenient to form small communities.
When twitter changed its feeds it had to force people into the new style feed by giving them a choice but wiping their choice every time they opened the app and forcing the algorithmic slop feed.
This is long overdue and I hope all countries adopt it. It should be the default and if people want to consume slop they will always have a choice to do so.
I came here expecting an apologia for the manipulative feeds of big tech, and found one at the top. If that’s not what you intended, perhaps consider that you’re acting as a useful idiot for them.
Yes - TikTok is popular, precicely because the algorithmic feeds are designed to be addictive. They show content, not because its good, not because its what you ask for, but because its exactly what will keep your eyes glued to the screen.
I would assume that the majority of users would prefer a Facebook experience that showed them just the friends and family they follow, and nothing else.
TikTok, IG etc are a little different as they’re actually media streams but I wanted to say that about Facebook - give me what I want on Facebook and it would be a wonderful service.
The same happened to algo-less social media sites.
Politicians do not believe that casinos are popular despite the gambling and they do not believe that social media is popular despite the feed. They want to protect the general public from addiction.
It's all fun and games when you download Tiktok. Then one day you're scrolling while your kid is in the pool, the lifeguard jumps in to save her, you realise you would have let your daughter die because you're addicted to watching dance videos on the fent rectangle, and you decide to quit.
[0] https://www.betstop.gov.au/
There's a very old fashioned 'battle of the sexes' being pushed by algorithmic content, and it's having visible toxic effects on the capacity of people to socialise, form relationships, engage in social reproduction and function normally in society. There's a vast torrent of such poison aimed at both men and women. Pretending it's only occurring to men, or that only men are being radicalised, is refusing to engage with the problem.
The comments section of literally every mainstream video on instagram reels, tiktok and the like that in any way touches on gender, masculinity, femininity etc - isn't dominated by misogynistic comments and hasn't been for years. But rather thousands of 'not all men, but always a man', 'yaas goddess', 'men aren't lonely enough', and countless other shibboleths.
The normalisation of FLINTA only spaces (and accommodation) and the like offline has brought these dynamics into the real world in ways that further isolate and dehumanise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLINTA*
Engagement does not correlate with want. I know people who hated every second of their time on TikTok because it kept showing them only the most awful and traumatic shit, but for the same reason, they couldn't just leave because the reason it was traumatic was because they felt terribly guilty to leave it alone. They were shown all sorts of threats about how terrible of a person they'd be if they didn't like, share, comment, etc. and they were scared out of their mind into having to do it, and that only taught the algorithm to show them more -- to seek out only the worst, most horrible and awful and traumatic content to show them because that scared them the most and compelled them the most. It's awful, horrible, sure they shouldn't have been on TikTok at all (no one should), but it shouldn't have done that to them either
Some are, some not. But the motivation is the harm of algo-feeds, the potential for manipulations from bad actors.
> The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.
That's more of a delusion, it does not shows you what you want, but what engages you, which just happen often enough to be something you want.
> But then "giving people control" won't change anything.
Probably true, but feeds like are tapping into addiction-mechanisms, returning control can help to regulate this, and prevents at least lowers the harm.
* American internet companies start to make the judgement that supporting EU/ANZ countries with difficult legal/tax requirements is a net cost and stop doing it, just IP-blocking those countries for the lowest legal risk
* Alternatively, American govt takes the position of "American companies don't have to follow the laws of random countries just because they accept IP packets from those countries". American companies eliminate their official business presence in onerous legal regimes but keep serving users there
* If above happens, this forces the resolution of the question "how does internet jurisdiction work across borders if USA doesn't play along", and a plausible answer is that internet messages start to be treated like physical imports and nation-level internet censorship moves under the purview of customs agencies
The globally routable internet is a very special and valuable thing, but it's a historical aberration and I suspect not very stable long-term. Even today, with the internet way more locked down than 20 years ago, it's still extremely libertarian compared to almost any other economically significant venue. In equilibrium, the state will demand its cut
Productivity spikes, youth mental health issues trend downwards and the nutcase right-wing parties struggle to maintain momentum.
Can we have this please? Pretty please?
Why would they do that? If they can't have a local business presence then they can't book local advertisers.
Which directly cuts any revenue they would get from the enterprise.
None of these companies need to have local business presences: they do because otherwise you can't get revenue from users in that nationality.
You don't need a total solution to have an influence: it's a saturated market where you're only as good as quarterly growth figures.
Identity verification is anti-consumer. Instagram in Australia offers either ID or video selfie to prove you are over 16.
>> 1K organic users in the last three months, ,with no marketing budget, and no VC funding.
- Chronological feed of local posts + external RSS feeds in one place
- Email newsletters / RSS
- Journaling feature
- Book log / reviews
- No Algorithms
- No like button
Opensource if you want to spin up your own instance.
Albanese replied: "Ban social media".
Indeed.
ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1gmakhz/anthony...
This is about legislation penalizing social media companies for shoving algorithmic slop down the throats of consumers.
But if we want to introduce political figures and their thoughts on social media; the traditional opposition party is lead by this man - someone willing to manipulate the public with social media.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/feb/12/fantastic-gr...
And the newer wonderkid of the media is engaged in widespread slopaganda: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-11/foreign-fake-news-pau...
At least, hopefully, this rule helps future generations. People’s brains are so addicted that they can’t even focus for 10 minutes straight. On top of that, I see moms giving their toddlers mobile phones while they eat or whenever they need to get something done. People should really start considering how social media affects us in the long term.
I mean, what else should I be doing? Self-analyzing and staring in the window?
But when I'm home, on my way from home to the gym, I take the same route every day, and it can get boring sometimes
I'm also terrible at keeping my phone charged, so sometimes I end up alone with my thoughts anyway
I am in England – It is considered very odd to talk to strangers on a train or bus
Mind you most of the talk seems to be along the lines of 'GWR couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery' these days.
Literally nothing has changed in the past century other than the variety of idle tasks one can keep in their pocket. People chose to not engage then exactly the same as they do now.
you say this like it's a negative thing :( have you tried it?
I think there a lot of survivorship bias in this observation, where the thing you’re most likely to see people watching is the thing that’s most flashy.
All that is to say, I don't think this forum is indicative of wider behavior AND smart people definitely inflate the value of "work" and "productivity" they do on their phone. We will never know unless we get Apple data, but I suspect a phone might be like 90% entertainment and 5% communication for most people. Maybe 5% is semi-productive work email, reading an article, etc.
I guess I am not sure if it matters where their attention goes. Although, it might be a bit of selective memory in how social people were before phones.
Not sure what would be more interesting than that.
There's only so much to talk about, and if they're doing that, they've probably already said all there is to say. I'm glad we have something to do now besides make awkward trivial banter or sit in awkward silence.
Thats part of the premise, we don't need to invent new technologies when email/rss are already self curated / federated.
The missing piece is discovery.
Which is why in addition to allowing you to aggregate internal/external feeds into one place, each instance also shares each external feed its users have subscribed too, and each user can share who they read (like a blog roll).