Australia's Algorithm Off-Switch: What It Won't Change

A switch for the feed

On 8 September the federal government released the exposure draft of its Digital Duty of Care, and the headline measure has a friendly name: "My Feed, My Way". If it passes, Australia would be the first country to legally require social media platforms to offer an algorithm off-switch.

The idea is simple. Platforms would have to notify every new and existing user aged 16 and over, and let them choose their default feed: personalised algorithmic recommendations, or only the accounts they actually follow. According to reporting on the draft, you would be able to change that choice over and over, not just once. Breaches of the wider duty could attract penalties of up to $109.2 million, enforced by the eSafety Commissioner, and the government says it wants legislation in Parliament before the end of this year.

That is a real change, and it is worth having. But it is also easy to misread. For privacy-minded people, the most useful thing to understand is what the switch does not touch.

Does turning off the algorithm stop tracking?

No. The off-switch changes what you are shown. It does not change what is known about you.

A follows-only feed still runs on the same platform, inside the same account, logged in as you. Every post you linger on, every profile you open, every video you watch to the end is still recorded. The advertising system that builds a profile of your interests keeps working whether your feed is algorithmic or chronological. Ads will still be targeted. The data brokers and advertisers feeding information into the platform from outside keep feeding it in.

This is not a flaw in the draft so much as a matter of what kind of law it is. The Digital Duty of Care is an online safety instrument. It regulates recommender systems because of what they push at people, especially young people. It is not a data protection law. The law that deals with what platforms may collect is a different one: the second tranche of Privacy Act reform, whose exposure draft was released on 31 August. Among its proposals is a requirement for ad tech to obtain consent before sharing tracking pixel data, the invisible code that reports your visits to other websites back to the big platforms. That is the reform that would actually touch the data. It is still only a proposal.

One more reason not to relax. Meta has announced it is retiring the "Your activity off Meta technologies" control, with the change rolling out from July, starting in the US. According to analysis of the change, the replacement limits how off-platform data is used, not whether businesses keep sending it to Meta in the first place. If you have followed an older privacy guide that told you to switch that setting off, that advice is going stale.

Opt-in or opt-out: the default decides everything

Here is the detail that will decide whether this law matters. When the Prime Minister announced the measure, he referred to both opting in to and opting out of algorithms. Monash University's Professor Rashina Hoda, who called the duty "long overdue", pointed out that those are very different settings.

If the algorithmic feed stays on until you go looking for the switch, most people will never find it. Inertia wins. If the feed is follows-only until you ask for recommendations, that is a genuinely significant change to how social media works in Australia. As of the exposure draft, which way the default points has not been made clear.

We already have evidence of how much defaults and follow-through matter. Three months into the under-16 social media ban, more than 80 percent of Australian under-16s were still on social media, and more than half of them said their account survived because nobody ever asked them to prove their age. The rule existed. It was largely not applied. Parliament has since given eSafety the power to compel documents from platforms and lifted the maximum penalty to $99 million. A switch that nobody is prompted to use risks the same fate.

When the bill is introduced, look for one thing: what happens to a user who does nothing.

Is an algorithm off-switch censorship?

The Coalition decided on 10 September to oppose the bill in its current form. Angus Taylor said the draft gives "a blank cheque for political censorship to the minister and to the government". The Coalition also argues that platforms facing a broad legal duty over "harms" will delete lawful but borderline content, because deleting is cheaper than defending it. That over-removal concern is not a silly one. Broad duties do tend to produce it.

But it helps to separate two different powers in the same bill. One is a user control: you choosing not to be fed by a recommender. Nobody's speech disappears when you switch your own feed to follows-only. The other is a ministerial and regulatory power over what content must come down. Only the second raises a genuine free-speech question, and it deserves scrutiny on its own terms.

There is also a trade dimension. A day after the draft was released, a White House spokesperson told The Guardian that "President Trump has unequivocally warned trading partners against imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion on America's leading technology sector." Communications Minister Anika Wells said she had received no such communication directly, and replied: "we're a sovereign nation. We have the right to defend Australian parents and kids, and we'll do that." Readers can draw their own conclusions about why the settings on your phone's feed have become a matter of international trade.

It covers AI chatbots and games, not just social media

Most coverage focused on feeds, but the draft duty reaches further. Online games, apps and AI chatbots would be required to protect under-18s from addictive design features and from content promoting eating disorders, misogyny, pornography, crime glorification and serious mental-health distress. eSafety would also gain the power to issue removal notices to nudify apps and websites.

For parents, that is the underreported part: the proposed law would cover your child's AI chatbot and their favourite game, not only the big social platforms. Professor Hoda has argued the under-18 framing is too narrow, since adults also lean on chatbots for health advice. Either way, none of it is law yet.

How to cut tracking the switch won't touch

You don't need to wait for Parliament. Most of the big platforms already offer some version of a follows-only feed, and there is plenty you can do about the tracking underneath it. None of these steps costs anything.

A word on VPNs, because people often ask. A VPN hides your IP address from the sites you visit and hides your browsing from your internet provider, which is useful on its own terms. It does not stop a platform profiling you while you are logged in to it. The platform knows who you are because you told it. If you do want one for the network side of things, we maintain a separate site, NoSpyOnVPN, that looks at the small number of providers that hold up to scrutiny.

1. Switch to the Following or Favourites view that most major apps already offer, and bookmark it or pin it so you land there by default.
2. Open each platform's ad preferences and your account-level ad settings with Google, and turn off personalised ads and interest categories where you can. Expect settings to be scattered across several menus.
3. Install uBlock Origin in your desktop browser. It is free, open source and blocks most tracking pixels and ad scripts before they load.
4. Log out of social platforms when you are not using them, or keep them in a separate browser or browser profile so they cannot see the rest of your browsing.
5. Use the website instead of the app where it is practical. Apps can request far more access to your phone than a browser tab can.
6. Review app permissions on your phone: location, contacts, microphone, photos and background activity. Revoke anything the app does not need to do its job.
7. Ask a platform or business what it holds on you. Under the Privacy Act you can make an access request, and if you get nowhere after 30 days you can complain to the OAIC.

A VPN protects the connection, not the account. If you are logged in, the platform still knows it is you.

Read about VPNs that hold up to scrutiny at NoSpyOnVPN →

Control over the feed is not control over the file

There is a familiar asymmetry here. A government agency generally has to produce your records when you ask. A platform or a data broker will send you a link to a help centre. The algorithm switch gives you more say over what appears on your screen, which is welcome. It gives you no new visibility into the file sitting behind it.

So take the switch when it arrives, and push for the default to be off. But treat it as the start of the conversation, not the end. The reforms that would change what is collected, like the pixel-consent proposal in Tranche 2, are the ones worth watching, and the settings you control today are the ones worth changing this week.