Australia has released draft Digital Duty of Care legislation that would require social platforms to offer users over sixteen a genuine choice between two default feeds. One may contain personalized recommendations selected by an algorithm; the other would show friends and creators the user has chosen to follow. New and existing users would receive a notification, and the selection could be changed later. The proposal, called My Feed, My Way, also extends safety duties to games, apps, and AI chatbots used by minors. Platforms would have to document how they reduce identified harms, with penalties reaching 109.2 million Australian dollars for failing the duty.

The proposal treats recommendation less as invisible infrastructure than as a setting that requires consent. That small change exposes how thoroughly the contemporary feed has confused convenience with authorship: the platform arranges attention, then presents its arrangement as personal taste. An exit button will matter only if the exit remains open. Europe has already shown how a nominal choice can be weakened by repeated prompts, reduced features, or a preference that quietly resets. Australia's test is therefore not the wording of the notification but the behavior of the interface after refusal. The useful measure will be simple: a person chooses the following feed, closes the app, returns the next morning, and still encounters the people they selected rather than the platform's latest attempt to select them.