China Previews A World Where The Algorithm Is Switched Off

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Our research project, RECapture, has studied Official Accounts targeting Chinese-Australians since 2019. Our data offer a longitudinal study of monitored content. We found the absence of algorithmic curation gives publishers significant autonomy to generate revenue independently of the app.

But within the platform itself, creators still fiercely compete for user attention. This is because users search for content they're interested in and subscribe to accounts they find most compelling, which means subscribed accounts compete with one another for user attention within that pool.

This competition has manifested as increased publication speed. Outlets, restricted by their own budgets, produce low-quality, clickbait content, often compiled from multiple fragmented and unverified sources, to attract subscribers and maximise user engagement.

Increasingly, this race is further accelerated by the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

The logic is simple: publish early and often; the clicks roll in throughout the day. Hit the right publication timing, the so-called“golden window”, and clicks spike further. Run a striking headline, and clicks climb yet again. This is the strategy to maximise a publisher's chances of appearing in a user's search query and capturing their attention.

It's clicks, clicks, clicks (or taps) that matter, as this is the metric to attract eyes to advertisements, and therefore money to the platform.

If the digital duty of care legislation passes in Australia and enough people choose to opt out of algorithms, we might see a similar increase in poor quality content here.

It's also possible the laws won't deliver what they promise. This is because we don't really know how digital platforms curate users' subscribed content. We need the platforms to be more transparent about this.

My feed, my responsibility?

Under the promise of giving Australians more control over their online environment, the government effectively offloads its responsibility of care onto individual users.

Exposure to harmful content implicitly becomes a consequence of the user's failure to switch off their algorithm. This could let tech companies off the hook.

The legislation also reads as a compromised version of the abandoned Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill.

Rather than tasking law enforcement bodies with addressing the issue (which risked being entangled in freedom-of-speech debates), the government instead leaves citizens to manage the problems themselves.

The government knows the product harms. So, it is making sure to protect the children through the under-16 social media ban, even while individualising choices for harmful digital products for everybody else.

Getting to the root cause

The Australian government has started viewing digital platforms more critically, which is a welcome change from laissez faire attitudes of the past.

However, the government tends to understand digital platforms as a bunch of functions and tools rather than products of technology business entities, with which the government nonetheless continues to do deals.