Social Discovery Is Becoming A User Choice

The Australian government released an exposure draft of its Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill on September 8, proposing that social platforms let users choose whether their primary feed is driven by recommendations or limited to accounts they follow.

The proposal is framed as an online safety measure, but it also puts a regulatory question around the distribution system on which brands, publishers and creators depend. If feed choice becomes prominent and persistent, recommendation-led reach can no longer be treated as a stable feature of social media.

What Australia Proposed

Under the draft legislation, online services would have to manage design features appropriately, conduct written risk assessments and take effective measures to address identified harms. The communications minister could specify which services must provide "user empowerment tools", including controls over recommended content.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said Australians over 16 would be able to "opt in or opt out of the algorithm easily". Platforms would need to ask users whether they want a recommended feed or posts from friends and creators they chose to follow, then respect that selection.

The bill is still under consultation, with submissions due September 22 and legislation planned for Parliament this year. Its duty-of-care provisions would start 12 months after royal assent. Failure to comply could attract a civil penalty of 60,000 penalty units, which the government values at up to A$109.2 million.

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Why Feed Choice Changes Distribution

The proposal does not ban recommendation systems, and many users may keep them. Wells acknowledged that algorithms remain useful for entertainment and local discovery. The commercial issue is that platforms may have to expose the choice instead of allowing recommendation-led distribution to operate as an invisible default.

For CMOs and communications leaders, that creates two distinct reach environments. A following feed rewards an audience a brand or creator has already earned. A recommendation feed offers discovery beyond that base, but the platform decides how content is ranked, amplified and measured.

The draft does not say that advertising delivery must change, so brands should not assume paid inventory will shrink. Organic reach, creator discovery and earned-media amplification are more immediately exposed. Teams that combine those outcomes in one social-engagement number could miss a material change in how attention was acquired.

What The European Test Already Shows

Australia is not starting from zero. The European Union's Digital Services Act already requires large platforms to offer at least one recommendation option that is not based on profiling. Australia's eSafety Commissioner noted in a May position paper that these alternatives are often reverse chronological feeds.

The same paper also records the central limitation: users often find chronological feeds less engaging and switch back, while platforms rarely disclose how many people use them. Australian officials say their model will differ by asking users to choose a primary feed and allowing that choice to be changed repeatedly.

Implementation will decide whether the choice is meaningful. At the launch press conference, a journalist raised European examples where non-algorithmic settings were less functional or had to be selected again. Wells said the government had been watching the EU experience, but the exposure draft leaves detailed user-tool requirements to later rules.

What CMOs Should Change Now

Regional marketing leaders do not need to forecast how many Australians will opt out. They need reporting that separates reach among existing followers from reach generated through recommendations, with the same split applied to creator partnerships and earned content where platforms make the data available.

That measurement should inform content and channel investment. Brands with weak follower relationships are more dependent on recommendation systems than headline audience totals suggest. Communications teams should also strengthen email, communities, search visibility and publisher partnerships that do not require a platform to introduce the brand to its own audience again.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the proposal as "giving people control". For executives, the practical response is similar: know which part of social reach comes from an audience the brand can reliably reach, and which part remains conditional on platform design and user choice.