"You're censoring our billionaires' freedom to addict your people, psychologically damage your children, promote climate skepticism, spread lies, motivate people to lynch others"
What is an "algorithm"? Showing the 20 most recent posts is an algorithm, but I doubt that's what they're targeting with the law.
I'm not just trying to find a technical gotcha here. I think it's worth identifying what exactly about an "algorithm" causes it to cross the line and become harmful.
When does an algorithm become harmful?
When it is designed and optimized to maximize the amount of time it engages the user?
What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
What about an algorithm that maximizes the amount of ads people see? Or the amount of money that the company makes?
> What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
If only we had 20+ years of scientific and societal evidence to show that regardless of what you think is "on the surface", the effects are catastrophic to mental health, democracy, the concept of truth, and everything else.
To you and me it's a very wide category, and there may be hundreds or thousands or even millions involved in me simply typing this, it being saved somewhere and the served back to you.
For lay-people though, it's become a term which means "The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you". So for lay-people to want to turn off the algorithm, they tend to mean going back to "just what your friends posted, in order"
> When does an algorithm become harmful?
I think this is a research subject. AFAICT it's pretty certain now that social media 'algorithms' have been optimised for addictiveness, which is likely to overlap somewhat with what users find interesting, but also cover things they find mildly titillating and/or outrageous.
The harms come in a bunch of forms. The never-ending scrolling of bite-sized videos seems massively destructive to attention span, and people seem to get addicted to it and may neglect other parts of their life. The platforms also seem really keen to send men and boys off to pretty hateful 'manosphere' content which is apparently making life hell for women (including teachers of teenage boys). Then we have all the body-image and anxiety issues caused in teenagers constantly exposed to influencers showing off their (faked) wealth, beauty etc.
Switching off the "shoving this all in your face" part of social media seems to me to be a win. When it was actually a way to keep in touch with friends and family it was a different game.
> The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you
That (plus a clause that exempts algorithms with user controls with full informedness and ability to confidently and reliably predict the outcome = old good filters and such) is the thing that should be in the legislation’s definitions section.
But then in the actual law it’s worse than “algorithm”, they’re actually banning broad over generalizations and design patterns instead, stuff like this:
> recommender features – content selected and displayed based on information associated with the user’s account;
> endless-feed features – continuous feeds of end-user content;
Dark patterns are called that for a reason. Having to click "next page" is a point of friction that slows and stops consumption. Pageless increases engagement in an addictive way - it's why companies do it.
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue
Your claims that these specific features provide no harm are belied by our knowledge that they do.
If "recommender" algorithms were the same as "just show me what my friends posted in chronological order", then there would not be such resistance to implementing the latter.
If endless scrolling were the same as pagination, then apps optimized for addictiveness would show a roughly equal distribution of both. But they do not.
Recommender algorithms as defined aren’t just the recommender algorithms you’re thinking about. It’s merely this idea that precise definition matter, nothing more. I’m not arguing that it was a bad idea to restrict some crappy patterns, or anything like that. Just that lawmakers defined that poorly.
And endless scrolling is pagination with a page size of one and a gesture (scroll down or swipe) for the next page. And trust me, “next page” can be helluva addictive. Endless pagination is an aesthetic preference. It may make it more slicker, frictionless, more visually appealing to get addicted, sure, but it doesn’t change a thing about the core element of the addiction. Same endless feed can be easily made counter-adductive by degrading relevance past some threshold, which clearly tells me the issue is elsewhere.
We have:
1. Predatory/addictive algorithms (A_bad). We don’t like those.
2. Old good user preferences-based algorithms (A_good). Those are fine.
Definition from the law (A_law) covers both (A_bad)+(A_good).
You said “if (A_law) wouldn’t be bad there wouldn’t be an issue”. That is obviously true, because (A_law) contains (A_bad). What you said is true, and it doesn’t contradict what I said - that A_law containing A_good in addition to A_bad isn’t great.
As for the second point, I provided a counterexample of how endless scroll can be a non-issue. If endless scroll can be a problem and endless scroll can be non-problematic too, that, says endless scroll is not what’s problematic. That’s just simple propositional logic.
I'm sure the final law will outline the specific details. But the intent of the law is not algorithms in a computer science definition, but modern recommendation engines.
Showing a chronological feed of accounts you have followed in this case would be non algorithmic. This is how all social media worked before the modern hellscape we are in.
Country that is the reason that globally we can't have breasts on social media, even in completely non-sexual contexts, complains about "censorship" from a country that wants to avoid melting its childrens' brains.
From my cursory look at this last night, the US doesn't like that the definition of "harm" is so poorly defined. They either don't care about the broader concept of opting out of an algorithmic feed or aren't willing to criticise it.
I've been disappointed by the coverage because none of it has helped me understand the legal context behind why they don't like this one specific thing.
They commonly take issue with laws against hate speech in other countries. But, actually, they themselves do have limits on speech. The line in their case is issuing death threats. It's an arbitrary line, both hate speech as in suggesting people of a given class should die, and direct death threats, can lead to people being harmed.
I don't much care about the US's arbitrary opinion on where the line is. And I don't think it's really a slippery slope either. There is a very acceptable range of things that could be reasonably considered banned speech.
As is common in political shenanigans, the draft bill has a euphemistic label ('algorithmic opt-out') - what it actually does is allow unspecified bureaucrats such as the Minister for Communications to designate any individual piece of content as 'harmful' and have it banished from the internet.
As an Australian who just wants relatively free access to information (and the ability to freely/easily discuss it), it's frustrating.
And it's not the first time the Australian government has done this; last year they banned U16 from social media, several weeks later everyone was alerted to Bondi by... social media.. so they could get the heck out of there, but U16... they were left clueless and unable to get updates (news sites ran 30+ minutes behind real-time events and official sites like NSW Police took 70+ minutes to even announce there was a shooter).
They're in bed with the resource and gambling sectors, and other big business.
Their record on making actual changes to benefit the people of the country vs keeping their donors sweet is pretty terrible lately. They've half-arsed so much in the last few years it's becoming a meme.
Fabians, AFAICT, pride themselves on evidence-based policy direction. That would have (for example) implied a full ban on gambling advertising as the government's own enquiry recommended, rather than whatever watered-down industry sop Albo actually pushed through.
Labor is in bed with big business, the gambling lobby and the resources sector. Ain't nothing 'left' about any of that.
The only people who think Labor are far left are those who have swallowed the ON/Wannabe-MAGA propaganda, as they try desperately to portray the mainstream as radical. The problem is that Albo's a boring, grey, middle-of-the-road, managerial type of PM so it's laughable to anyone with half a brain.
Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of problems with how Labor are going about governing, this is not an endorsement of them. But the idea they're far anything is such utter brainrot.
You got exactly what you voted for. The left is pro censorship now. From political correctness to deplatforming, to right speech to labeling things misinformation to forgetting my body my choice when Covid came along. This is the natural end of wokism.
You're getting downvoted for the factual inaccuracy of your statement. The party in control of government in the United States has gone to extraordinary lengths to chill free speech. From overt viewpoint discrimination for broadcast television to banning press outlets critical of the administration, to deporting people in legal statuses for political speech, there is no modern parallel by any other political party. The right wing's support for free speech has enormously fallen.
Thanks. Reading it at first seemed like “the people” here is you know, end users, people toggle some settings on their devices, not a government employee deciding. It turns out a government employee doing it. Yeah, just because US government is goofy doesn’t somehow make others sane or good somehow.
Can you elaborate how this might be different than laws in Germany that disallow certain speech around white supremacy? Or laws that disallow violent rhetoric?
I think censorship is bad because it restricts expression, and I believe restricting expression is bad because I believe free expression is both a human right and incredibly important to free society. But obviously, there are times when we collectively are going to agree to restrict rights to some other benefit. The question is of balance. To what degree are we restricting expression, and to what end? Is it truly justified?
I have no idea if this proposal is shit or not, I'm not steeped enough in it, but it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?" - well, the important details are literally everything else other than the part where it is censorship, so that's the part we need to address...
I certainly don’t support censorship, but honestly it’s difficult to parse meaning from your argument. It reminded me (though of course not on the same level) of the infamous Miss South Carolina response.
Replace “expression” with “beer” and it reads about the same. It’s a long answer to say “I think this is bad, but sometimes we should do it”, while giving no reasons either way. In other words, it’s too vague to meaningfully dispute or agree with; it doesn’t really say anything.
> it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?"
That’s not what your parent comment is saying, and I really wish replies on HN (and in general) stopped imbuing the original comments with arguments which aren’t there. Asking “how do these things differ” does not imply support for either thing, it’s a request for clarification. Not every question is an argument in disguise.
Yes, merely asking how two things differ is not necessarily intended to be an argument in favor or against something. I used deduction based on context to figure out that part.
Text being low bandwidth, I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies it's unreasonable to assume that making a comparison to something that people are highly sympathetic to isn't likely to be an appeal to sympathy for the other thing being compared. I just disagree, my interpretation was completely reasonable here. If it's wrong, well, it's not like I told them to go fuck themselves. It would then merely be a misunderstanding. Though, I doubt it.
(To be honest, though, I also should say that I actually have no idea whether they would lean more for or against on the comparison. Not everyone is a fan of hate speech laws, after all.)
> I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies (…)
You are wrong. My point is closer to “don’t make assumptions; it muddies and derails the conversation and leads to unnecessary unproductive disagreements”.
Compare your original answer to a sibling response, which was made before yours.
America constantly restricts expression it doesn't like. It's just that you believe being topless in the park is bad speech but calling for genocide is good speech. Billionaires using computers to slurp up and regurgitate others work is good, but people copying others work is bad. Saying "lets kill the president" is bad, but saying "lets kill the senator" is good.
America does not have a monopoly on what good and bad speech is, and it certainly restricts speech, via legal means, via cultural means, and via application of force.
I'm not personally a big fan of all U.S. restrictions on speech, but I don't really see your point, to be honest. The U.S. can right sometimes and wrong others. In principle, I don't really see why the U.S. government and its officials generally shouldn't be able to raise concerns about legislation and litigation that may impact U.S. businesses, especially if they believe they might impact inadvertently the rights of U.S. citizens. There are plenty of examples where I believe the U.S. official or agency was spot-on.
If you are not a fan of U.S. soft power though, then it seems like the future will be brighter for you; we're certainly burning all of those bridges as fast as possible. But, that is really neither here nor there.
"The draft laws provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps or websites, and streamline the child cyber-bulling and adult cyber abuse schemes to enable eSafety to deal more quickly with this harmful material."
Suppose the government had instead banned spare car tires. 99.99% of the time, we wouldn't even notice.
But it's during emergencies that the effects of such a ban become apparent.
Put yourself in the shoes of a 15 year-old on or nearby Bondi at the time of the attack. You hear.. fireworks?.. a car backfiring..? and meh, you continue sipping your iced matcha latte.
Sometimes having the choice to learn/see/hear information matters. Very often (like with a spare tire ban), it doesn't matter - nobody notices the absence - but at certain times, it really matters.
Is this not a bias towards the status quo, conflating two entirely distinct problems?
We have problem A: receiving timely updates for life threatening events has not been implemented, or poorly.
Then we have problem B: social media companies have monetised engagement, without any guardrails to avoid detrimental effects, and continue to push to maximise this.
Just because the status quo involves a high speed, low latency, flood of unverified information via social media, which tangentially solves problem A in cherry-picked examples, does not mean it has to always be the case. This same proposed solution is also rife for abuse, in the same way a legitimate early warning can be sent out it can just as easily be used to spread hoax events.
Would it not make more sense to actually solve problem A, e.g. get the police to pull their finger out and use the emergency broadcast service available in just about every phone on the planet, and treat problem B as its own distinct issue? By conflating the two I don't see how we will ever solve either problem in any effective manner. By doing so we're essentially agreeing to a world where our best case scenario is the narrow intersection of A & B, while the rest of the time we're left with the full outer join of the two problems - bad access to verified emergency updates and a flood of engagement-bait crap on social media.
To be clear, I do not agree with how this legislation is being put forward nor with how it is proposed to be controlled. This is layman's legislation at its worst for a highly technical subject, and even in a more charitable light I struggle to see it as anything but a distraction and power grab rolled into one, with little likelihood of solving the problem at hand.
You can literally justify absolutely anything using that logic.
That one time the toddler reached for his daddy's unsecured rifle and killed the intruder who had a history of perpetrating violent home invasions. Therefore, don't secure your firearms.
That is the seed of a reasonable argument against securing guns - if you're expecting to have to use a gun to defend yourself, you want to have a gun and have it on hand and ready to use. If it is illegal to have the gun out of storage then that is a problem in the event of being attacked by someone.
It seems unlikely that the toddler to be using a gun effectively though.
Social media could have just as easily spread misinformation about the Bondi incident. It was a failure of the NSW Police to not use the SMS emergency warning systems, which is not a good reason to keep everyone on social media.
> As is common in political shenanigans, the draft bill has a euphemistic label ('algorithmic opt-out') - what it actually does is allow unspecified bureaucrats such as the Minister for Communications to designate any individual piece of content as 'harmful' and have it banished from the internet.
Not a fan of the paternalistic/nanny state attitude of the current government or that ministers track record, but isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
> isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
Precisely. This bill is being sold to the public under a benign label, but smuggled along with it are some dubious affordances. The same was accomplished with 'age verification for U16s', which, if named correctly, would have been called 'everyone (not just U16s) must present a licence or use a VPN to use the internet'.
Here is a law I wish we had for social media. Let's just align incentives.
If you are working on a social media platform, and your total comp is >= 500k, your children must use your platform for the average amount of time that children of that age range use your platform nationwide.
Brilliant move by the Australian Government to combine the algorithm opt-out with other restrictions. All the headlines are just about opt-out, and the assumption is the US is complaining about opt-out and claiming it is censorship. I suspect the actual claim of censorship is about putting the "onus on platforms to stop harmful content, such as illegal pornography and videos promoting disordered eating, from being shared" (from another BBC article, and similar in AU news sources). I expect manosphere stuff and maybe Nazi will end up in there too, or added later once laws are in place.
Don’t get me wrong, it sucks we don’t have it, I wish we had it and I admire the US for having it.
I’m just pointing out Australian’s don’t have the ability to draw on it’s constitution to push back on government censorship which does take place in other forms.
This article is conflating two things. The US response to the Digital Duty of Care law and the US response to the algorithm opt-out provision.
The US did criticize the opt out provision.
But when the US says this, its about a different provision in DDC, which says platforms need to proactively remove harmful content.
>"We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
> "We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
Australia should put this submission in the circular file. The US government's opinion about any of this shouldn't matter to Australia, especially when the intent is to allow users to elect to use the natural state of no-algorithm time-based-ordering presentation of the content. This is like saying that an impact study needs to be done to determine if walking to the end of the block is safe enough to be allowed rather than blasting people out of a cannon towards the end of the block. Or saying that people should not be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that order if they choose to.
> Another worry was that the proposed laws could affect Australia's "reputation as a jurisdiction that enables innovation," the submission said.
How magnanimous of the US to be concerned about this for Australia.
Australia and the United States have mutual interests and investments in the Pacific. Underlying this is a sense of shared cultural values and shared legacy as former British colonies.
To act as if the United States is sticking its nose in Australia as if it's Venezuela or something shows a rather pedestrian understanding of Australian history and geopolitics.
If the United States retreats from the world the Australian people will be among those who suffer the most. The interest in each other is mutual.
The United States could retreat from the world for any reason at any time. Could be because Australia refused to be annexed, could be because the white house fridge ran out of diet coke that morning. Then donald could change his mind the next day.
Given that there's no rhyme, reason, or consistency to it, best to ignore demands, keep calm, and carry on.
If the US 'retreats' from Australia because Australia acts like a sovereign country and makes it's own laws as it sees fit, then Australia is better off without them.
The reality is nowhere near as stark, however. Australia can tell the US to go fuck itself over it's latest comments and nothing will likely come of it. Maybe some tariffs - more punishment for US citizens and a slight dip in Australian exports.
It will not 'ruin the relationship' to anywhere near 'retreats from Australia' levels. Australia possibly holds quite a good hand given how important Pine Gap is to US interests in that entire quadrant of the globe.
Pine Gap is not a ‘good hand’, it is a shackle and we Australians are bound by its oppressive function just as negatively as are the 2 billion people whose human rights it abrogates every millisecond of the day.
Are you not aware that Australia is a willful participant in the wholesale abrogation of human rights, in the form of Pine Gap?
Of course the US has a say in Australian affairs when it comes to matters of human rights about censorship and access to information. Without that stranglehold, the Australian public may well inform themselves about the crimes of their state, committed every single millisecond, against close to 2 billion other human beings.
It is beyond ridiculous that Australians whines about their special relationship with the US, while doing absolutely nothing about the very criminal behavior that both states are co-partners in committing.
The other day I opened my instagram and was presented with a few frames of a big hairy vagina in my explore feed.
I don’t find this “harmful” but it’s not what I expect the algorithm to show me when I literally open instagram to find out about local events and sudden changes in cafe open hours in my area.
I really hate the way meta and other social media companies have injected themselves into our communities and then sent us all insane and set us against each other using algorithms.
I suggest that "vagina" is US terminology for pudenda in its most general aspect. The imprecision can be excused given that the population of our once-great nation is not known for its proficiency in matters of either sex education or geography.
Can we agree that these apps should be renamed antisocial media?
I'm not sure what planet you live on but the one where I live, the general term for female genitalia is a "vagina". I've never heard someone say, "kiss my vulva".
Some doubt, actually. From the Guardian's reporting:
> Under the plan – dubbed “my feed, my way” – users opting out of the algorithm will see content only from individuals and groups they have actively chosen to follow.
> Users would be asked what they want their default feed to be through a pop-up message provided on their platform of choice.
So I should look forward to the day I see my Reddit feed free of r/Fauxmoi propaganda? Or does Reddit get a free pass like it has with age verification? Because we're still able to browse Reddit without an account, for starters. They had a popup that it required an account to browse for about a week, then they reverted back to allowing everyone to browse without one because they lost too many viewers.
I don't care enough about this issue to form any opinions on the impacts to free speech or anything like that, but being able to choose to a social media feed that's entirely from the users I follow would be fantastic. What a dramatic quality-of-life improvement.
Australia doesn't have protected speech. We're starting to see the dam break where rules that were left unexplored because it would go against the US driven view of globalization is starting to wane due to the US's loss (self destruction?) of its soft power.
>In a rare submission to the proposed laws, the US embassy in Canberra said it had "serious concerns[...] "We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined"
is this like one of those "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" memes? Why is the US embassy making submissions to proposed laws in Australia? The day cannot come soon enough when the last country tells the US to voice its concerns somewhere else
Wow, no, actually the complete opposite. Algorithms are free speech but not fair speech. They let those with money or otherwise control over the algorithm to speak far louder than anyone else, giving them an unfair speech advantage, or even taking away the free speech of others by drowning them out.
We need free and fair speech, not just free speech. Everyone should have an equal voice. That means no algorithms. You get one voice, people choose to listen to your or not.
You can choose not to go to work too. Have fun doing that. Many social media apps today are essentially required to use because official announcements of all sorts are only made there.
Yours is the sort of unrealistic viewpoint often used to justify this sort of propaganda. Further, you are lying. Banning algorithms in no way prevents you personally from saying or commenting on whatever you wish. Your free speech is fully intact.
But by supporting forced algorithms on social media you are the one who wants effective censorship.
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[ 41.9 ms ] story [ 1774 ms ] threadSerious violation!
I'm not just trying to find a technical gotcha here. I think it's worth identifying what exactly about an "algorithm" causes it to cross the line and become harmful.
When does an algorithm become harmful?
When it is designed and optimized to maximize the amount of time it engages the user?
What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
What about an algorithm that maximizes the amount of ads people see? Or the amount of money that the company makes?
If only we had 20+ years of scientific and societal evidence to show that regardless of what you think is "on the surface", the effects are catastrophic to mental health, democracy, the concept of truth, and everything else.
To you and me it's a very wide category, and there may be hundreds or thousands or even millions involved in me simply typing this, it being saved somewhere and the served back to you.
For lay-people though, it's become a term which means "The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you". So for lay-people to want to turn off the algorithm, they tend to mean going back to "just what your friends posted, in order"
> When does an algorithm become harmful?
I think this is a research subject. AFAICT it's pretty certain now that social media 'algorithms' have been optimised for addictiveness, which is likely to overlap somewhat with what users find interesting, but also cover things they find mildly titillating and/or outrageous.
The harms come in a bunch of forms. The never-ending scrolling of bite-sized videos seems massively destructive to attention span, and people seem to get addicted to it and may neglect other parts of their life. The platforms also seem really keen to send men and boys off to pretty hateful 'manosphere' content which is apparently making life hell for women (including teachers of teenage boys). Then we have all the body-image and anxiety issues caused in teenagers constantly exposed to influencers showing off their (faked) wealth, beauty etc.
Switching off the "shoving this all in your face" part of social media seems to me to be a win. When it was actually a way to keep in touch with friends and family it was a different game.
That (plus a clause that exempts algorithms with user controls with full informedness and ability to confidently and reliably predict the outcome = old good filters and such) is the thing that should be in the legislation’s definitions section.
But then in the actual law it’s worse than “algorithm”, they’re actually banning broad over generalizations and design patterns instead, stuff like this:
> recommender features – content selected and displayed based on information associated with the user’s account;
> endless-feed features – continuous feeds of end-user content;
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue
If "recommender" algorithms were the same as "just show me what my friends posted in chronological order", then there would not be such resistance to implementing the latter.
If endless scrolling were the same as pagination, then apps optimized for addictiveness would show a roughly equal distribution of both. But they do not.
And endless scrolling is pagination with a page size of one and a gesture (scroll down or swipe) for the next page. And trust me, “next page” can be helluva addictive. Endless pagination is an aesthetic preference. It may make it more slicker, frictionless, more visually appealing to get addicted, sure, but it doesn’t change a thing about the core element of the addiction. Same endless feed can be easily made counter-adductive by degrading relevance past some threshold, which clearly tells me the issue is elsewhere.
We have: 1. Predatory/addictive algorithms (A_bad). We don’t like those. 2. Old good user preferences-based algorithms (A_good). Those are fine.
Definition from the law (A_law) covers both (A_bad)+(A_good).
You said “if (A_law) wouldn’t be bad there wouldn’t be an issue”. That is obviously true, because (A_law) contains (A_bad). What you said is true, and it doesn’t contradict what I said - that A_law containing A_good in addition to A_bad isn’t great.
As for the second point, I provided a counterexample of how endless scroll can be a non-issue. If endless scroll can be a problem and endless scroll can be non-problematic too, that, says endless scroll is not what’s problematic. That’s just simple propositional logic.
Showing a chronological feed of accounts you have followed in this case would be non algorithmic. This is how all social media worked before the modern hellscape we are in.
I've been disappointed by the coverage because none of it has helped me understand the legal context behind why they don't like this one specific thing.
I don't much care about the US's arbitrary opinion on where the line is. And I don't think it's really a slippery slope either. There is a very acceptable range of things that could be reasonably considered banned speech.
As an Australian who just wants relatively free access to information (and the ability to freely/easily discuss it), it's frustrating.
And it's not the first time the Australian government has done this; last year they banned U16 from social media, several weeks later everyone was alerted to Bondi by... social media.. so they could get the heck out of there, but U16... they were left clueless and unable to get updates (news sites ran 30+ minutes behind real-time events and official sites like NSW Police took 70+ minutes to even announce there was a shooter).
Their record on making actual changes to benefit the people of the country vs keeping their donors sweet is pretty terrible lately. They've half-arsed so much in the last few years it's becoming a meme.
Fabians, AFAICT, pride themselves on evidence-based policy direction. That would have (for example) implied a full ban on gambling advertising as the government's own enquiry recommended, rather than whatever watered-down industry sop Albo actually pushed through.
Labor is in bed with big business, the gambling lobby and the resources sector. Ain't nothing 'left' about any of that.
The only people who think Labor are far left are those who have swallowed the ON/Wannabe-MAGA propaganda, as they try desperately to portray the mainstream as radical. The problem is that Albo's a boring, grey, middle-of-the-road, managerial type of PM so it's laughable to anyone with half a brain.
Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of problems with how Labor are going about governing, this is not an endorsement of them. But the idea they're far anything is such utter brainrot.
Calling democraticly elected people you dislike a "bureaucrat" is disingenuous
A big concern with these (and other associated laws) being pushed through is it grants the eSafety Commissioner powers to edict what’s allowed.
That position is appointed, not elected.
Those laws explicitly declare what they ban. This one doesn't.
I have no idea if this proposal is shit or not, I'm not steeped enough in it, but it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?" - well, the important details are literally everything else other than the part where it is censorship, so that's the part we need to address...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
Replace “expression” with “beer” and it reads about the same. It’s a long answer to say “I think this is bad, but sometimes we should do it”, while giving no reasons either way. In other words, it’s too vague to meaningfully dispute or agree with; it doesn’t really say anything.
> it's not enough to point to hate speech laws and say "censorship is okay here, why not there?"
That’s not what your parent comment is saying, and I really wish replies on HN (and in general) stopped imbuing the original comments with arguments which aren’t there. Asking “how do these things differ” does not imply support for either thing, it’s a request for clarification. Not every question is an argument in disguise.
Text being low bandwidth, I could be wrong, but what you're saying implies it's unreasonable to assume that making a comparison to something that people are highly sympathetic to isn't likely to be an appeal to sympathy for the other thing being compared. I just disagree, my interpretation was completely reasonable here. If it's wrong, well, it's not like I told them to go fuck themselves. It would then merely be a misunderstanding. Though, I doubt it.
(To be honest, though, I also should say that I actually have no idea whether they would lean more for or against on the comparison. Not everyone is a fan of hate speech laws, after all.)
You are wrong. My point is closer to “don’t make assumptions; it muddies and derails the conversation and leads to unnecessary unproductive disagreements”.
Compare your original answer to a sibling response, which was made before yours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49811633
Significantly shorter than yours and answers the question (yours frankly doesn’t) without assumptions.
America does not have a monopoly on what good and bad speech is, and it certainly restricts speech, via legal means, via cultural means, and via application of force.
If you are not a fan of U.S. soft power though, then it seems like the future will be brighter for you; we're certainly burning all of those bridges as fast as possible. But, that is really neither here nor there.
You can entirely opt out of algorithmic feed and just see an unfiltered list of your connections posts.
Or if you choose the algorithmic option, there's some ability for the ministers to request content be removed.
Could it be abused to remove content they don't like? Of course
Is it a marked improvement on Meta/Tiktok getting carte Blanche to select what people see? I think so.
What you've described isn't part of this?
"The draft laws provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps or websites, and streamline the child cyber-bulling and adult cyber abuse schemes to enable eSafety to deal more quickly with this harmful material."
But it's during emergencies that the effects of such a ban become apparent.
Put yourself in the shoes of a 15 year-old on or nearby Bondi at the time of the attack. You hear.. fireworks?.. a car backfiring..? and meh, you continue sipping your iced matcha latte.
Sometimes having the choice to learn/see/hear information matters. Very often (like with a spare tire ban), it doesn't matter - nobody notices the absence - but at certain times, it really matters.
We have problem A: receiving timely updates for life threatening events has not been implemented, or poorly.
Then we have problem B: social media companies have monetised engagement, without any guardrails to avoid detrimental effects, and continue to push to maximise this.
Just because the status quo involves a high speed, low latency, flood of unverified information via social media, which tangentially solves problem A in cherry-picked examples, does not mean it has to always be the case. This same proposed solution is also rife for abuse, in the same way a legitimate early warning can be sent out it can just as easily be used to spread hoax events.
Would it not make more sense to actually solve problem A, e.g. get the police to pull their finger out and use the emergency broadcast service available in just about every phone on the planet, and treat problem B as its own distinct issue? By conflating the two I don't see how we will ever solve either problem in any effective manner. By doing so we're essentially agreeing to a world where our best case scenario is the narrow intersection of A & B, while the rest of the time we're left with the full outer join of the two problems - bad access to verified emergency updates and a flood of engagement-bait crap on social media.
To be clear, I do not agree with how this legislation is being put forward nor with how it is proposed to be controlled. This is layman's legislation at its worst for a highly technical subject, and even in a more charitable light I struggle to see it as anything but a distraction and power grab rolled into one, with little likelihood of solving the problem at hand.
That one time the toddler reached for his daddy's unsecured rifle and killed the intruder who had a history of perpetrating violent home invasions. Therefore, don't secure your firearms.
It seems unlikely that the toddler to be using a gun effectively though.
Not a fan of the paternalistic/nanny state attitude of the current government or that ministers track record, but isn't this two separate things which they intend to do?
Precisely. This bill is being sold to the public under a benign label, but smuggled along with it are some dubious affordances. The same was accomplished with 'age verification for U16s', which, if named correctly, would have been called 'everyone (not just U16s) must present a licence or use a VPN to use the internet'.
If you are working on a social media platform, and your total comp is >= 500k, your children must use your platform for the average amount of time that children of that age range use your platform nationwide.
Which would play into all sorts of agendas.
Also, I’m not proud of this but Australia has no explicit constitutional right to free speech, and no bill of rights at the federal level AFAIK.
I’m just pointing out Australian’s don’t have the ability to draw on it’s constitution to push back on government censorship which does take place in other forms.
The US did criticize the opt out provision.
But when the US says this, its about a different provision in DDC, which says platforms need to proactively remove harmful content.
>"We ask that Australia clarify how exactly 'harm' and 'risks' shall be determined... ensuring these definitions do not encroach on protected speech," the US said in its submission.
Australia should put this submission in the circular file. The US government's opinion about any of this shouldn't matter to Australia, especially when the intent is to allow users to elect to use the natural state of no-algorithm time-based-ordering presentation of the content. This is like saying that an impact study needs to be done to determine if walking to the end of the block is safe enough to be allowed rather than blasting people out of a cannon towards the end of the block. Or saying that people should not be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that order if they choose to.
> Another worry was that the proposed laws could affect Australia's "reputation as a jurisdiction that enables innovation," the submission said.
How magnanimous of the US to be concerned about this for Australia.
To act as if the United States is sticking its nose in Australia as if it's Venezuela or something shows a rather pedestrian understanding of Australian history and geopolitics.
If the United States retreats from the world the Australian people will be among those who suffer the most. The interest in each other is mutual.
Never mistake for bonhomie that which is adequately explained by money and self-interest
Given that there's no rhyme, reason, or consistency to it, best to ignore demands, keep calm, and carry on.
The reality is nowhere near as stark, however. Australia can tell the US to go fuck itself over it's latest comments and nothing will likely come of it. Maybe some tariffs - more punishment for US citizens and a slight dip in Australian exports.
It will not 'ruin the relationship' to anywhere near 'retreats from Australia' levels. Australia possibly holds quite a good hand given how important Pine Gap is to US interests in that entire quadrant of the globe.
Of course the US has a say in Australian affairs when it comes to matters of human rights about censorship and access to information. Without that stranglehold, the Australian public may well inform themselves about the crimes of their state, committed every single millisecond, against close to 2 billion other human beings.
It is beyond ridiculous that Australians whines about their special relationship with the US, while doing absolutely nothing about the very criminal behavior that both states are co-partners in committing.
I don’t find this “harmful” but it’s not what I expect the algorithm to show me when I literally open instagram to find out about local events and sudden changes in cafe open hours in my area.
I really hate the way meta and other social media companies have injected themselves into our communities and then sent us all insane and set us against each other using algorithms.
I would avoid Instagram.
Can we agree that these apps should be renamed antisocial media?
> Under the plan – dubbed “my feed, my way” – users opting out of the algorithm will see content only from individuals and groups they have actively chosen to follow.
> Users would be asked what they want their default feed to be through a pop-up message provided on their platform of choice.
I don't care enough about this issue to form any opinions on the impacts to free speech or anything like that, but being able to choose to a social media feed that's entirely from the users I follow would be fantastic. What a dramatic quality-of-life improvement.
I wonder in what creative ways they'll maliciously conform.
is this like one of those "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" memes? Why is the US embassy making submissions to proposed laws in Australia? The day cannot come soon enough when the last country tells the US to voice its concerns somewhere else
We need free and fair speech, not just free speech. Everyone should have an equal voice. That means no algorithms. You get one voice, people choose to listen to your or not.
Yours is the sort of unrealistic viewpoint often used to justify this sort of propaganda. Further, you are lying. Banning algorithms in no way prevents you personally from saying or commenting on whatever you wish. Your free speech is fully intact.
But by supporting forced algorithms on social media you are the one who wants effective censorship.
Me: I want chrono timelines!
Australia: I want chrono timelines!
Trump: I DON'T!
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
Zuck? Advertisers?
Because if we're talking about users, they'll be given an option, not be forced.
See also: the Iran war seems to be the greatest advertisement for reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
https://newint.org/energy/2026/has-trump-doomed-fossil-fuels
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/iran-war-energy-shoc...
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/09/nx-s1-5872786/iran-war-evs-so...
It's like freedom.equals(we don't like regulation at all)