I didn’t see from the article if they have a definition of “the algorithm” that means anything?
Like, I know this is preaching to the choir here of all places, but you literally can’t have a social media without “an algorithm”, but I think we all know that’s not what they mean. But what actually do they mean? Do they mean “showing things from people you haven’t followed or subscribed to”, do they mean “showing posts or videos with stats that make them think you’ll like it”? Do they mean any selection algorithm that’s personalized to your account rather than site wide? So you could still have “top of the last 12 hours”, but everyone would have the same top?
Because every platform has more content on it per day than any human could consume that day. Something somewhere must choose what to show you and what order it’s in, because it can’t show everything. So I’m curious how they’ll define what “the algorithm” is…
Thank you for sving me the trouble of typing basically that. heh.
It’s like when they talk about how to define porn and the best definition is basically “you know it when you see it”. But you can’t write law like that (except they can and do and it causes problems).
I have a feeling that these companies will intentionally try to push low quality content to users who have turned it off, to motivate them to turn it back on.
Cause that’s just the way these fuckers are.
“No algorithm. Every post. Unfiltered. In chronological order.”
This. You can already have it on LinkedIn in the EU at least, “sort by recent” instead of “sort by relevant”. Imho its very effective, turns me off within 20 seconds instead of 5 min. If the effect works similarly on less cringe platforms, i can see this as a huge win for consumers.
Australian here, don’t be fooled by our governments tokenistic press releases. This legislation sounds good but it’ll be another insufficient measure that doesn’t actually address the problem. Like the under 16s “ban” this will allow the government and media to talk about social algorithms like it’s solved and they were succesful.
They’re token gestures to look like they’ve done something this term other than pass liberal party tax cuts.
Remember when Albo was spruiking that he grew up in trust housing? Contrast that with the big fat load of less than nothing Labor has done on housing. Passing the buck at every opportunity, “it’s a state issue” followed by “it’s a federal issue” followed by “it’s a… errr… skills shortage!”
Vote for a real change, Vote Greens.
So would a vpn do the trick for everyone else!?




