this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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Australia could make social media algorithms optional and follow UK ban on pornography depicting strangulation (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 day ago by arbilp3@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Australian government is considering allowing users to opt in or opt out of social media algorithms, and is looking at a recent UK ban on depictions of strangulation and suffocation in pornography.

The social services minister, Tanya Plibersek, said social media was “playing a huge role” in the increase in sexual violence among teenagers and choking, and confirmed the options were being considered as the government develops its second action plan to end family and domestic violence against women and children.

It follows the death of a 16-year-old girl in Sydney after a suspected sexual strangulation act. Guardian Australia reported on Thursday that a source informed about the case said the teenager was believed to have become unconscious as a result of asphyxiation during sexual intercourse, often referred to as “choking”. No arrests have been made...

Labor will also soon begin consultation on a digital duty of care bill that will put the onus on tech companies, including AI companies, to make online spaces safer for all users.

Plibersek said the digital duty of care legislation, as well as a second round of privacy reforms, could also help tackle camera-equipped smartglasses, which she said she had serious concerns about.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

No, I don't know that perfectly well and neither do you. The higher than normal concentration of programming socks types here on Lemmy knows that, but the average Tide Pod Challenger out there on the street has probably only ever heard the word "algorithm" used in the context of social media dark patterns, and on top of THEM there's the lobotomized luddites that make up the world's congresses and parliaments who would ban dihydrogen monoxide if given ten grand each.

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 1 points 11 hours ago

How about limiting displayed posts to only ones from people and groups that you have specifically opted into, and those posts have to be displayed in chronological order and there is to be no weighting or preferencing of the resulting corpus of posts presented to the user.

I will make an allowance for "discovery", where no more than 10 percent of displayed posts can be from a randomised selection of geographically local users/groups and 5 percent of truly random global users/groups, (if a general location of the user is explicitly provided by them), and once shown, posts from that selection cannot be shown again for 7 days.