My feed, My Way | Prime Minister of Australia Skip to main content Main navigation About the PM Our work Help with the cost of living Stronger Medicare and aged care Opportunities for Australians A fair go at your first home Building Australia’s future Your Ministry Media Contact the PM Home Media My feed, My Way My feed, My Way Media release Tuesday 8 September 2026 The Hon Anthony Albanese MP Prime Minister of Australia The Hon Anika Wells MP Minister for Communications Minister for Sport Listen The Albanese Government is taking the next step following its world leading social media age ban to ensure Australians have more choice online, with draft legislation for the Digital Duty of Care released today for targeted consultation. These new laws will put the onus on digital service providers to provide a safe online environment, setting minimum standards for the features and tools they use. This will include an Australian first, “My Feed, My Way,” initiative which will give Australians control over their social media algorithms. Social media platforms will be required to send a notification to new and existing users offering them a choice over their default feed. Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm. Alternatively, users can opt out of personally recommended content in their default feed and see the friends and creators they choose to follow. This will give Australians greater choice over their platforms and what they see. Further, digital services like online games, apps and AI chatbots will be required to protect under 18s from design features that have negative behavioural impacts, like addictive features or those that can have an effect on a young person’s self-esteem. They will also be required to protect under 18s from harmful content like: content that promotes, encourages or accelerates eating disorders content that promotes hostile ideas about women and gender equality pornography content that glorifies crime or life endangering stunts content that causes serious mental health distress, including abuse and bullying. Australians will benefit from better protection from seriously harmful and illegal content across digital services, and social media users will be afforded more choice. The draft laws provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps or websites, and streamline the child cyber-bulling and adult cyber abuse schemes to enable eSafety to deal more quickly with this harmful material. Digital platforms will be required to document the measures taken to address identified risks of harm to Australian users and ensure these measures remain effective over time. Failure to comply with the Duty of Care could attract penalties of up to $109.2 million, with the independent eSafety Commissioner responsible for compliance and enforcement. The Government is seeking feedback from digital platforms, industry bodies, civil society organisations and advocates on the draft laws, with legislation to be introduced to Parliament this year. Quotes attributable to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “This is not about giving government control, it is about giving people control. “Today we are releasing the government’s approach to give Australians choice over their online experience, “My Feed, My Way.” “Australia is leading the world with our social media age ban and online safety approach. “This work has been led by parents and advocates and we ha
The damage is already done for most people who already use it. Whenever I go to a restaurant and see friends, families, and couples together, I feel sad that instead of talking to each other, they’re all watching TikToks or reels. On a bus or train, barely one or two people are actually doing something other than watching something online.
At least, hopefully, this rule helps future generations. People’s brains are so addicted that they can’t even focus for 10 minutes straight. On top of that, I see moms giving their toddlers mobile phones while they eat or whenever they need to get something done. People should really start considering how social media affects us in the long term.
Why do people (or at least politicians pretend to) believe that social networks are popular despite the content algos and not because of them? The reason Tik Tok blew up is because it shows you what you want to see without you twiddling with a dozen dials.
Maybe giving people what they want is not great for them. I am ok with this argument. But then "giving people control" won't change anything. Vast majority of users would rather put up with shocking (to me) levels of annoyance and expense just not to configure/fix anything themselves.
I’d prefer similar to Doctorow, that governments simply make scraping and republishing (anything that anyone who consents can access) explicitly legal, then alternate frontends may appear with their own algorithms.
> Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day.
Aussie here. Great to see this. I don't think this goes far enough: I'd like to see addictive algorithms, content, and doomscrolling banned entirely. Not an option to see a different feed. Illegal. It's manipulative, hurts people, hurts children: make it illegal.
In 2023 the Australian Prime Minister Albanese was asked by Neil Mitchell on 3AW radio what he would do if he was "Dictator for a Day".
Albanese replied: "Ban social media".
Indeed.
ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1gmakhz/anthony...
I read the first sentence and thought: what is the government of Albania doing in Australia?
Brilliant! I really hope they get it through, and I’ll be interested to see what impact it has on screen time app sales in the region.
I don't think this goes nearly far enough, and is another example of our government latching onto a juicy trending topic and doing the bare minimum to make a positive sounding news byte out of. This should be an opt-in model for algorithmically driven content, infinite scrolling, etc. An opt out model just feels like they're compromising for the benefit of industry lobbyists on the issue.
Right direction to move in, but probably won’t do much.
“Drug dealers are now required to give their customers the option to purchase salad instead of cocaine”.
with draft legislation for the Digital Duty of Care released today for targeted consultation.
I hope it won’t be “community consultation” like they did with the AABill… that time where the Australian government ignored everyone in the community except for a handful of lobby groups. You know… that time where people filed FOI Requests about the AABill and not a single request was responded to.
Forget politics people… you all have zero sway. The laws have already been written by The Inner Party, and they’re just drip feeding them to us over time so that we don’t notice the sudden shifting of the Overton Window to serfdom