How much control should we have over the algorithm?

0:00This is the Guardian. Regidarm it here on Gadigal Land with a full story. If it works, it could be a game changer. Algorithms have governed our social media feeds for years, learning what we're engaging with and giving us more of it. Often, quickly taking us down a dark rabbit hole of content. But these algorithms have become the centre of debate over how harmful they could be, potentially radicalising users when it comes to extreme political views and misogynistic content. The government says it wants to do something about it. Today, technology reporter Josh Taylor on the government's plan to fix social media algorithms and if it will even work.

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2:05Plus, every product is 100% vegan, cruelty free, and made with clean skin loving ingredients that work with your skin, not against it. Amplify your everyday. Go to thrivecosmetics.com slash shine 26 for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. That's thrive cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S.com slash shine 26. Hi Josh, it's good to see you. Good to see you. I've got to ask her before we get into it, would you turn off your algorithms if you had a choice? I mean, I think I probably would in some respects because I'm probably a fairly frequent user of Blue Sky, and that is, you know, the default is the chronological feed in reverse order of like the people that you follow. And it really feels like a throwback. It really feels like quite good. And I enjoy it. I find, say, the Instagram algorithm to be interesting in terms of what it surfaces for me, but also sometimes just like, I saw this post from a friend and then I refresh

3:08and just disappeared and you can't find it anymore on. So that is quite annoying. So I think if I had the option, I might look at like the stuff that it would recommend for me in another field, but it wouldn't be my default view. I just want to see what my friends are doing more than anything else. Ah, so you would turn off the algorithm. All right. So how do algorithms actually work? Well, I mean, it varies from platform to platform really. There's sort of no one set definition of how you define the algorithm, but it's basically, if you go to say your 4U page on Instagram or the 4U page on X or something like that, you will see posts that the algorithm has determined are of most interest to you based on all the data that they've collected about you. And that's like stuff that you've interacted with before, different search terms you've been looking for, even stuff you've sort of mentioned in messages on Instagram and stuff like that, they'll pick up on that, ads that you've clicked on. It's learning about you. Is that right? Yeah. It's something that's sort of evolved over time. Originally, it was sort of more focused on trying to figure out how to target advertising

4:12to you, but these platforms are all vying for attention and keeping you on the platform for as long as possible. So they want you to have a feed that you can constantly be scrolling. There's always going to be new information. And through an algorithm, they just can keep servicing stuff that they think is relevant to you and keep you engaging and keeping you on there. And that's sort of where they've gone to with this. We should say they're proprietary rights. So we don't have the code of the algorithm where we could really have a look at what exactly they're doing. So there are some levels of openness, like X does publish some of its sort of recommendations at Simzansophek.com. But yeah, it's basically sort of the secret source of all these platforms that they don't really want you to know how they're sort of working. If the feed is sort of continuing to give you content that will keep you on there, as you say, what is it about that that makes them so heavily criticized? Well, I think keeping you on there is part of that for sure. It's basically about becoming quite addictive, like whether you're addicted to the platforms themselves, because it is a bit of a black box and they're sort of estimating what stuff

5:13you would like to see. We're essentially being shown what the platforms think that we should see and what they think we want to see. And so there was a lot of criticism when Twitter got taken away in a musk and he started mucking around with the algorithm and all this time, never when we were seeing Elon Musk post all the time on X. And there's been a lot of research into sort of the manus field, like I think it did a story last year where I set up a blank phone with, you know, said as a teenage boy and it took me not long to sort of start getting served manus field content. So these algorithms are sort of very highly sensitive and yeah, we just don't really know enough about them to be able to make an informed choice against about do we want to be seeing this sort of content and what's it actually doing to people who are maybe not consciously aware that they're being sort of guided down a path through these apps. So that fear of people being radicalised, I guess, is what prompted the government to look into this. We're talking Monday morning, so we haven't seen this legislation yet, but we know the government wants to introduce it.

6:15Can you give us an idea of what's in it? Yeah, so this is the digital duty of care at legislation. Everyone's sort of focused on the opt out of the algorithm's kind of idea, but this is sort of a broader package job. What they're essentially trying to do is address online harms and basically reduce online harms. And so they kind of saw the social media ban for under 16s is sort of the first step, even though the digital duty care was being worked on before that, but this basically would affect everyone, not just teens, would be adults and everyone like that, basically saying these platforms should be taking a lot of steps to reduce the amount of harm on the platforms and give people more control over what they're seeing in the feeds and how they're seeing it and all that sort of stuff and give them the ability to opt out if they want. Because if you get recommended something today, for example, you can kind of click, no, I'm not interested in that kind of thing, but you don't have this sort of holistic view of why you're being shown stuff. So I think it's basically designed to sort of just reduce the amount of harm that people are experiencing on these platforms. So if I had more control and I could turn off the algorithm, what potentially would that do to my social media feed?

7:17Yeah, so if you open up Instagram now and you click on the Instagram logo, you can go to a reverse chronological feed where you see the newest stuff first and then just all just the stuff of the people that you're following or the stuff that they're reposting and things like that. And so it's there already, but it's not very easy to use and it's not very prominent. People don't really have it on by default. They can't have it on by default. But it's there. So if the government were to introduce their new rules, how would that change things? I would assume that this would essentially mean that people could select an option in settings. And when they open Instagram, that is the feed that they see. It's not something they have to go find somewhere else. It would mandate that tech companies would make it really easy to opt out, basically, of the algorithm. They would make it basically just so that you can have it as you wanted. Like, I don't know if you were using like Facebook 15 years ago, but like that was basically how Facebook used to work back then. Twitter used to work that way back then where you would just see a reverse chronological feed of the stuff that people, your friends with or groups you're following are posting.

8:19And that's what you see. You're not being served up new stuff all the time. And like, when you get to the end of the feed, all the stuff you've seen, that's it. You can get off the platform essentially. We're going to get on to some of the reaction in a moment, but there's also an element of these rules about identifying problematic or illegal content. So what does that mean? Well, I mean, this is stuff that the platforms do already. I think a lot of it is built into e-safety codes already in terms of just like terrorist content, stuff that children shouldn't be seeing, child abuse material, things like that. They already do a lot of that, but I think that they're probably looking more for like systemic harmful stuff, like eating disorder stuff, or we're seeing what sort of nanosphere content. And I think this is probably going to be the most contentious part of the legislation because it's talking about online harms and who gets to decide what online harms are. And I thought it was interesting, the communications minister this week, who's been asked for working at Annika Wells, she said that it has been reluctant to sort of define how online harms are going to be defined and things like that. And said, we're going to have the exposure draft and have a discussion around that.

9:21And so it may be that they're going to sort of work out who is going to decide what online harms are and how is it going to be enforced and everything like that. To be continued on that. And very briefly, do we know if they're talking about penalties for the tech companies, for non-compliance, or if the safety commissioner will have bigger powers? Yeah, I mean, it looks like they're going to follow what they're doing with the social media ban bill. So it's going to be fines of about $100 million for breaches. And then there will be sort of investigatory powers for the safety commissioner to sort of attain documents and see how the platforms are doing stuff. And that's part of what the social media ban amendment that's going through the parliament this week is looking at us also. They've obviously learned the lesson from the lack of enforcement and the social media ban and they're sort of preempting it in the digital duty of Kerala. There's a hundred million a lot. I mean, it's kind of a rounding error when you're talking about meta and TikTok and things like that. I mean, the settlement that just happened in the US with the state's attorney general

10:24was, I think, about $17 billion US dollars. And I think that I heard somewhere that that's basically... A month of revenue for meta, like it's nothing at all. It's... OK, but there could be a financial penalty there. Yeah, I mean, they probably don't want to spend the money. So anything that they can get them out of spending the money, they'll probably do. We'll be right back. You're either all in on this model or maybe you're building with another name. Are there speed or is it security? Or your AWS AI? Don't pick a side. Pick them all. AWS AI is how? Support comes from wise. The smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. Fed up with losing out to hidden fees when you send money abroad with your everyday bank, choose the smart way. Wise.

11:24You can count on the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google. No unwelcome surprises. Plus, ditch that, where's my money feeling? Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions, saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart, get wise, download the Wise app today. Tees and sees apply. Let's look at the political response because the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, he's saying this could be an effort to censor social media. That confuses me because I thought the whole point is that algorithms are already making choices about what we see. What is he talking about? Algorithms are a form of censorship because it's basically someone deciding what the content that you should most want to see is surface to you. It was interesting that when there was a lot of back and forth, when Twitter was not owned by Elon Musk about what censorship comprised of, and they had this policy, particularly after the January 6th rights in the US, where it was freedom of speech, not freedom of

12:28reach. People could still post stuff on the platform, but they wouldn't get all that engagement. I think subsequently that whole model has been turned on its head, where basically they're promoting the stuff that gets engaged with the most, which is often just the most outrageous stuff. I think once x did that, we started to see metadata. Algorithms are prioritizing certain types of speech over others, so that is potentially a form of censorship, where the coalition will probably be somewhat opposed to it's what I mentioned before in terms of the online harm stuff and who gets to decide what is a harm and what isn't. The devil will be in the detail there. A lot of the e-safety stuff has been bipartisan, the social media ban, the coalition established, the e-safety commissioner role. I think a lot of them have been leaning into a lot of their right-wing echo chamber of seeing the role of the regular as being a chief sense of kind of thing, and I don't think that that's been particularly helpful with keeping everyone in board. So it seems to see how it all goes, but at the moment, it seems like they do have reservations

13:29on it. I've noted that one nation is also calling it censorship. They've described it as all well-earned. Is this going to be part of the pushback here, from perhaps the right of the political spectrum, because the algorithms, arguably, have been good for them, boosting a lot of their content. So it's not just successful at using those algorithms to try and get their message out. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you only have to sort of see how well plain-handsome cartoon series is done, which is solely based on sort of engagement on social media platforms. She's definitely cornered the sort of Facebook commented demographic and is extremely popular. So they wouldn't want to change it. I will note that Nuckel Roberts, the one nation senator, basically said in, I think, the last estimates hearings that if one nation was elected, that they would get rid of the ECF Commissioner position entirely. So they're not a fan of that particular office, and they would basically get rid of it entirely if they were elected. So I think that a lot of this stuff they would try to repeal. On the other side of the political spectrum are the Greens. They're not happy because they seem to want these rules to go even further.

14:34Yeah. So the Greens are basically saying, rather than being opt out, which would be something that you would have to go into your settings of your app and basically say, I don't want to have the algorithm fed to me, they would want it to be op-in. So you would have to specifically say, yes, show me all the random stuff that you think I would be interested in. And this is something that the teacher's consent organisation has been advocating for as well. And so there is a bit of support for that particular model, but I think it's still too early to say how it's going to work. The communications minister this week has already been saying, you know, it's an exposure draft, it's going to be open for consultation, we'll take feedback on board. So I think that's sort of gauge how people are feeling about it before they sort of decide one way or the other. I have to ask you, I mean, Angus Taylor has said he wants the government to focus on fixing the problems with the under 16 social media ban before even coming to these new rules. Does he have a point given all the criticism of that ban? I would argue that the digital do you care thing should have been first. I think that one of my biggest criticisms of the social media ban is that like a lot

15:35of the issues that they complain that are affecting teenagers on social media affect adults too. Although some adults who's gotten to Facebook brand and being radicalised by the algorithm on Facebook, you know, older people have been scammed on those apps. So there's a lot of stuff they should be tackling, but that ban was sort of easy to announce and an easy win for the government, although not so easy and hindsight, although we've predicted beforehand. And there is already a bill before parliament that they're trying to pass this week that would fix the social media ban by doubling the funds, giving East African more invested into Tory powers. But I think that it's interesting. I've read some comments from the SAFES Commission recently where they're basically saying that the social media ban is sort of something that will become effective over time in terms of just like, right now we've got a cohort of like 13 to 15 year olds who at one point in time had social media and now under the government's rules should not have access to it. And so we're going through a phase where people are sort of adjusting to it and sort of more of a social change than sort of the technological issues that are there will

16:38sort of work themselves out. It will remain to be seen if that will happen or not, but I thought it was interesting to sort of been kind of saying just wait and see, don't expect it to happen overnight. Josh, thank you so much for talking to us today. Thanks. That was technology reporter Josh Taylor. You can read more about the government's proposed changes to social media algorithms over on TheGuardian.com. This episode was produced by Taylor Strano, sound design and mixing by Lou Hill. And the executive producer of Full Story is Hannah Parks. Don't forget to subscribe or follow Full Story wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also leave a review. I'm Regid Ahmed. See you soon.