Could Australia’s Proposed Algorithm Rule Break The Current Echo Chamber That Is Social Media Today?

Social media algorithms have become something of a scapegoat recently. We’re blaming them for keeping us scrolling, showing us increasingly similar content and, most importantly, creating what we’re calling online “echo chambers” where we’re repeatedly exposed to views we already agree with.

So the question we’re asking is, what would happen if we could simply choose what kind of feed we wanted?

It’s the sentiment that’s been floating around the internet in recent months, and now, it’s the idea behind a proposed new set of social media rules in Australia. These rules could give users significantly more control over how their feeds are curated.

According to Reuters, Australia’s government is proposing legislation that would require platforms to give users a choice between an algorithmically personalised feed, on the one hand, and one showing content only from accounts they have chosen to follow. Users would also need to be notified about the choice, rather than having the personalised option operate entirely in the background.

This seems to be part of Australia’s wider push to make social media platforms more accountable for online safety, especially as they were one of the first countries to introduce a social media ban for children under the age of 16 in December 2025. The proposed rules would also require platforms to assess and report on measures that they’ve taken to address harms that are affecting Australian users, with companies potentially facing fines of up to A$109.2 million for failing to comply with these new regulations.

On the face of it, giving people more control over what they see sounds like an obvious win, especially since that is, for all intents and purposes, what they’ve been asking for. But is switching off the algorithm really the answer?

Do We Actually Want An Algorithm-Free Internet?

I’ve written before about the growing desire to escape algorithms, whether that’s Bluesky giving users more control over how content spreads or the nostalgia surrounding the supposedly algorithm-free days of MySpace. And I think the really important issue to understand here is the fact that people keep talking about algorithms as if they’re at the centre of all “evil”.

But I believe that perhaps most people don’t necessarily want no algorithms; they want algorithms to stop making all decisions for them. And to take this further, in other cases, it’s not even that people don’t want algorithms. They think they don’t want them, but there’s a high chance that they won’t actually like what reality looks like without algorithms.

After all, recommendation systems can be incredibly useful and they’ve been used for a very long time. They can introduce us to new music, creators, products, news and communities that we would probably never have found ourselves.

Sumit Kumar, co-founder of digital solutions experts Creative Ideaz, points out that personalised feeds can prevent us from wasting time on content that isn’t relevant to us. At the same time, he argues that some users understandably find the amount of information platforms collect about them invasive.

Finding the balance between these two things is what’s been tough. The better an algorithm gets at predicting what we want, the more it potentially influences what we see, and that’s where it can go a little bit too far.

Could More Choice for Users Actually Break The Echo Chamber?

This is where Australia’s proposal gets particularly interesting, because in some ways, it’s assuming that giving users control over their own feeds will automatically solve these problems. Because if algorithms learn that you engage with a certain type of political content, for example, they can keep serving you more of it. Eventually, your feed might become a remarkably accurate reflection of your existing worldview.

And that’s not necessarily because the platform has decided you should believe something. It could simply be because you’ve demonstrated that you are more likely to click, watch, comment or share it.

Kumar believes giving users more control could help address this problem, arguing that it could allow people to avoid harmful or hateful content while potentially giving them a more balanced view rather than reinforcing divisive echo chambers.

But it’s just not as simple as that. Humans are perfectly capable of creating echo chambers all on their own, without algorithms, whether we want to believe it or not. If I choose to follow only people I agree with, remove anyone who challenges my opinions and deliberately select the content I want to consume, I can create a very comfortable little bubble all by myself. It’s a social phenomenon that we’re seeing encouraged across platforms and social environments across the board these days.

In fact, one may argue that an algorithm might occasionally be the thing introducing me to something I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. It may be something you don’t like or don’t agree with, but just because you didn’t choose to see it doesn’t make it inherently bad.

Perhaps The Real Issue Is Control

This is why I don’t think the debate should simply become “algorithms are bad” versus “algorithms are useful”, because that’s simply not a fair representation of the whole issue. After all, both can be true. The problem is what happens when personalisation becomes so sophisticated that users no longer feel like they’re choosing what to see.

Australia’s proposal doesn’t necessarily mean the end of algorithms. Instead, it could give users a clearer choice about whether they want the algorithm to curate their experience. Or, whether we choose to accept it or not, it might even expose the fact that perhaps we (users) are the a bigger part of the problem than we’d like to believe. Algorithms may not require us to make constant conscious decisions, but they’re still showing us content based on what we like and want to see, whether we’re totally aware of it or not. Will this change in how algorithms work and are implemented expose a darker reality about how we really are?

As Kumar puts it, social media can be a useful tool for learning and entertainment, but it isn’t always clear how our data is being used. Giving users more power over what they see, he argues, “can only be a good thing”. And I think in some ways, it’s true that transparency is positive, but I think people may not be very happy with what they discover about themselves. Whether that’s the fact that they start finding their feeds boring and end up begrudgingly reverting to the dreaded algorithmic version, or they start consciously choosing to see the content they used to pretend not to enjoy.

Ultimately, giving people more control could be positive, but it could also reveal that we don’t always want what we think we want, and I’m not sure people are ready to face that reality. An algorithm might annoy us by showing us something outside our usual interests, but it might also occasionally expose us to an idea, person or perspective we would never have chosen ourselves.

If Australia does eventually give users that choice, we’ll get to see what happens when millions of people can decide whether they want the algorithm or not. And maybe we’ll discover that we really do want a more human-controlled internet. Or, perhaps we’ll discover that, after years of complaining about algorithms, most of us quite like having something else decide what to watch next, whether that’s due to the unpredictability of the feed or the removed accountability that it allows us.

Who knows what the results will be, but I’m pretty sure this is going to bring to life some thoughts and feelings they don’t see coming.