Australia's draft bill would make platforms keep asking if you want the algorithm off

In Europe the largest platforms have had to offer at least one feed not built on profiling since the Digital Services Act of 2023 ^[7]. Take-up of the chronological feeds that resulted has been modest, and The Next Web attributes that to the DSA obliging nobody to put the option in front of a user ^[15]. Anyone who has shipped a settings screen to satisfy a rule knows the shape of it: the toggle exists and the box is ticked, while the count of people who ever found the toggle stays small.

What product teams tell themselves is that a user who wants different ranking will go looking for it. What users do is open the app and read what is on top. The Australian draft accepts the second description and moves the obligation from the existence of the choice to its delivery ^[1]. Plenty of jurisdictions have granted the escape route; The Next Web notes that almost none require the platform to keep asking ^[16].

That changes what a regulator has to prove. The under-16 ban is the local counter-example: Meta, TikTok and YouTube have been found not complying, and the government moved to double the fines and expand the regulator's powers in response ^[3], which is three of the biggest services in the country ^[9]. The Next Web's read is that Australia's age checks failed at their first test ^[4], and that a pop-up requirement is trivially auditable in a way age assurance is not, because an undercover researcher account can establish inside an afternoon whether the prompt appeared at the stated interval ^[17].

The 2x2 worth drawing has one axis for whether the non-profiling alternative exists in law, and one for whether anyone is obliged to surface it repeatedly. Europe sits in exists-but-unsurfaced ^[7][15]. The Australian draft moves to exists-and-surfaced while leaving the personalised default switched on, which is what an opt-out regime does: it relies on users acting ^[14]. The Greens want feeds to be opt-in, which flips the default rather than the prompt and sits in a different quadrant entirely ^[13].

Which quadrant you land in decides what compliance means. Under the draft, the artefact is the prompt. A platform can serve the dialog on schedule, watch almost everyone dismiss it, and remain inside the law, because the question the bill asks is whether the choice was offered rather than whether anyone took it. Under an opt-in rule the artefact is the feed itself ^[14].

The forcing function for a team with its own dormant setting: decide which number your obligation will be measured against before a regulator decides for you. If it is "the option is available", the work is a menu item and a screenshot. If it is "users chose it", the work is the default, and no amount of prompting substitutes. Australia has drafted the first instrument aimed squarely at the gap between those two, and it should be read as a delivery mandate rather than a new right ^[1][16].