Albanese’s fix for your social media feed has one big flaw

September 8, 2026 — 3:34pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Anthony Albanese has a good line for his United Nations speech in New York this month: Australians get to switch off the algorithm.

Like the teen social media ban, it is a popular idea that fits in one sentence, and the prime minister will take it to the UN as a model for others. It’ll win votes back home in Australia.

The trouble is what the switch does once you flick it – and what it doesn’t do.

The algorithm uses swaths of data to guess what you’ll buy and what will keep you scrolling. It’s the system that has made social media so addictive, and so destructive.

Turn it off under the model Communications Minister Anika Wells announced on Tuesday, and you’ll just see the accounts you already follow.

Consent campaigner Chanel Contos has spent the past nine months warning us of the issues with social media algorithms: the 16-year-old boy who has spent a year marinating in gym content, then hustle culture, then the online sludge that tells him women are the reason his life is hard. He follows 40 of those accounts now.

Under the government’s new “My Feed, My Way” initiative, he opts out – and still sees 40 manosphere........

© WA Today