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).
Not everyone wants to live in a society where the American form of limited free speech is the accepted societal norm. Australia can choose its own views, so can France, and Britain, and Turkey, and China. It's not a colony of the us.
This is a surface level quibble. The actual definition of "harm" is decided through "policy research," which is already very much in the hands of bureaucrats, but it gets worse. The groundwork is more often than not farmed out to Melbourne universities through cushy contracts, who then liaise with the ASIO to launder pre-determined conclusions through presumed academic objectivity.
"Disingenuous" implies someone is doing something on purpose. Anyone calling a Minister an unelected bureaucrat is just mistaken - obviously a minister isn't an unelected bureaucrat. They're an elected bureaucrat.
That said, whoever this Anika Wells woman is the law looks like a bad idea and it is nice that the US has found it in their interests to say something helpful.
The Right/Republicans have always touted free speech. They love getting their hate out.
The Left have always been a bit more 'censory', generally because of their bleeding hearts on behalf of the minorities that are the targets of the Right's exercising of their free speech.
Such is my understanding. I don't really mind either stance, with the caveat that anything 'censory' has a chance of having it's definitions expanded (and admittedly, this is succumbing to the slippery slope fallacy).
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.
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?
Most Australians dislike social media. We are underrepresented on it, and it shovels the US’s issues down our throat. The current algorithms mainly send us US political propaganda and things that are supposed to make us hate nearby Asian powers like China.
> 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.
It’s a good question, and it’s not well defined. I am hoping that it allows us to customise feeds more. If I have problems with body image, don’t show me topless photos. Same goes with alcohol and gambling, which some platforms do have. The answer must not be either be subjected to content you don’t want to see or don’t use social media at all.
I think the line for algorithms is anything machine learning or neural network based, not simple ordering.
Side note: When iterating on male avatars, ChatGPT incrementally increases muscular features without being prompted to do so. There are biases in these machine-learned algorithms.
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.
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.
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.
"You're censoring our billionaires' freedom to addict your people, psychologically damage your children, promote climate skepticism, spread lies, motivate people to lynch others"
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.
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.
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).
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.
Not everyone wants to live in a society where the American form of limited free speech is the accepted societal norm. Australia can choose its own views, so can France, and Britain, and Turkey, and China. It's not a colony of the us.
That said, whoever this Anika Wells woman is the law looks like a bad idea and it is nice that the US has found it in their interests to say something helpful.
The Left have always been a bit more 'censory', generally because of their bleeding hearts on behalf of the minorities that are the targets of the Right's exercising of their free speech.
Such is my understanding. I don't really mind either stance, with the caveat that anything 'censory' has a chance of having it's definitions expanded (and admittedly, this is succumbing to the slippery slope fallacy).
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.
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?
Most Australians dislike social media. We are underrepresented on it, and it shovels the US’s issues down our throat. The current algorithms mainly send us US political propaganda and things that are supposed to make us hate nearby Asian powers like China.
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.
I think the line for algorithms is anything machine learning or neural network based, not simple ordering.
Side note: When iterating on male avatars, ChatGPT incrementally increases muscular features without being prompted to do so. There are biases in these machine-learned algorithms.
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.
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.
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.
Serious violation!
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 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.