The State's Endless Appetite for Algorithmic Controls

Canberra appears endlessly convinced that social pathologies can be solved by adding a few more toggles to software settings. Facing rising rates of youth violence and disturbing sexual trends, the Australian government is now mulling plans to give users the ability to opt in or opt out of recommendation algorithms.

The initiative, championed by Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek in collaboration with campaign group Teach Us Consent, follows a familiar pattern: identify a cultural crisis, blame the feed, and propose a technocratic fix. According to figures cited by Plibersek, a newly created account for a young boy takes an average of just 23 minutes to be targeted with violent misogynistic material. Meanwhile, 60 percent of young people now report experiencing strangulation during sexual encounters—a reality ministers directly attribute to algorithmic amplification and adult media.

To combat this, the government is not merely weighing algorithm switches. It is also looking at Britain’s recent prohibition on depictions of strangulation and suffocation in adult pornography. The political urgency has been intensified by the death of a 16-year-old girl in Sydney following a suspected sexual strangulation act involving asphyxiation.

Yet one might ask how effective another round of top-down prohibition will actually prove. Canberra’s regulatory track record offers ample ground for skepticism. A blanket ban on social media for under-16s took effect last December, accompanied by mandatory age-verification requirements for pornography. Plibersek herself has publicly conceded that children manage to dodge these boundaries with little effort.

Unfazed by the porosity of existing bans, the government is preparing to double down. A forthcoming digital duty of care bill aims to place legal responsibility squarely on tech platforms and artificial intelligence firms to make digital spaces safe. Additional privacy legislation is also being drafted to address camera-equipped smartglasses, which the Attorney-General has instructed the privacy commissioner to investigate over concerns regarding covert filming and blackmail.

“Tech companies should know that their products are safe and make them safe before they release them on to an unsuspecting public,” Plibersek stated. Yet shifting the entire burden of moral instruction and personal safety onto silicon valley engineers and state regulators remains a curious strategy. When previous prohibitions fail before the ink is dry, adding more controls rarely produces a different outcome.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com