By Ada "Peer-Review" Sparks
Sydney commuters interviewed by the BBC this week liked the sound of a simple idea: the ability to see posts only from people they actually follow, instead of whatever an algorithm decides to serve them. "Good to have choice," was the general sentiment, the BBC reported.
That choice is what Australia's government is proposing under planned "digital duty of care" legislation, according to The Guardian. If passed, social media would become something closer to a menu — the current algorithm-driven feed on one side, a chronological, friends-only feed on the other. But The Guardian is careful to flag the catch: passage of a law is not the same as compliance. Tech companies, the paper notes, may "still find ways to frustrate its intent" and keep users on the feeds that hold their attention longest — and their advertising dollars.
That skepticism about platforms policing themselves gets separate, concrete backing from a BBC Technology investigation into a different Instagram problem: scammers are sending users fake copyright-infringement claims and demanding ransom payments, threatening account suspension if they refuse. Users told the BBC they've lost money to the scheme because, in their account, "Meta struggles to identify scammers."
Neither the Australian bill's fate nor Meta's response to the ransom scam is settled. The legislation is still a proposal, not law, and the scale of the Instagram scam — how many victims, how much money — isn't quantified in the BBC's reporting. What ties the two stories together is the same underlying question regulators keep circling back to: when platforms and their algorithms cause harm, who actually has to fix it, and how do you make them?
Extraordinary claims. Ordinary evidence? Then no — this is a story to watch through to an actual vote, and an actual fix.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian and BBC News.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."