Australia Wants to Let People Switch Off the Algorithm. Here's What That Means for Your Reach
The federal government just released draft legislation that would let social media users opt out of algorithm-driven feeds altogether. It's called the Digital Duty of Care bill, and the headline feature has been branded "My Feed, My Way."
It's a good move for kids. It's a genuinely trickier one for small businesses that have built their reach on social media.
If you run a small business page, this is worth paying attention to. Not because it's law yet, it's still in exposure draft stage and won't hit Parliament until later this year, but because of what it signals about where platforms and regulation are heading.
What's actually being proposed
Under the draft laws, platforms would have to prompt users, through recurring pop-up messages, to choose between two options: keep a personalised, algorithm-driven feed, or switch to seeing content only from the accounts they've actively chosen to follow.
Users would need to be over 16 to make that choice. Platforms that don't comply could face fines above $109 million. The bill sits alongside Australia's under-16 social media ban and separate rules aimed at protecting kids from addictive design features, but the algorithm opt-out is the part with the biggest implications for anyone posting content to grow a business.
It's not a mandatory opt-in model, which the Greens have pushed for. The government has deliberately avoided calling it opt-in or opt-out at all, landing instead on what it's describing as a "neutral choice" presented through the pop-up.
Not everyone thinks that framing holds up. RMIT social media researcher Caitlin McGrane has pointed out the similarity to cookie consent pop-ups on websites, which research shows people generally find annoying and click through without really engaging with. A neutral choice only works if people actually stop and choose. There are also open questions about how platforms would verify someone is over 16 in the first place without collecting more personal data than they already do.
Why this matters if you run a small business page
Here's the thing most people posting content don't think about often enough: reach through the algorithm has always been borrowed, not owned. You post, the algorithm decides who sees it based on signals you don't fully control, and if the algorithm changes its mind tomorrow, that reach can disappear with it.
An opt-out option makes that borrowed reach even more conditional. If a chunk of your audience switches to a followed-only feed, the only way you show up in their feed at all is if they've actually followed you. No amount of good content, hashtags, or posting at the "right" time gets you in front of someone who hasn't hit follow and has turned the algorithm off.
That doesn't mean the algorithm becomes irrelevant. Plenty of people will keep it on, plenty won't even notice the prompt. But it does mean the businesses who've been coasting on algorithmic discovery, hoping to go viral their way into new customers, are more exposed than businesses who've spent time turning viewers into actual followers.
My take
I think this is a useful nudge, even before it becomes law, though I'd take the cookie pop-up comparison seriously. If people click through the choice on autopilot the way they do with cookie banners, the actual number of people who end up on a followed-only feed might be far smaller than the headlines suggest. Apple ran a comparable prompt years ago asking people to opt out of ad tracking, and even now the opt-out rate in Australia sits around 27 per cent. If this plays out the same way, most feeds stay algorithm-driven. Worth planning for either way, but not worth assuming everyone's about to switch it off overnight.
There's a second layer worth knowing about if you run paid ads alongside organic content. Algorithmic feeds are built to keep people in the app longer, which means more ad slots. If a meaningful chunk of users do opt out and spend less time scrolling, that's fewer ad slots up for grabs, and platforms will likely respond by pushing CPMs up for everyone else. So the cost of reaching people through paid social could quietly rise even if your own audience never touches the opt-out setting. A lot of small business social media strategy is built on the assumption that consistent posting eventually gets rewarded with reach. That's already shakier than people want to admit, and a law that makes opting out easier just makes the gap between "people who see your content because the algorithm favours you" and "people who see your content because they chose to" more visible.
The businesses that will feel this the least are the ones already treating follows as the real goal rather than a vanity number. If someone has to actively choose to keep seeing you, the content that gets someone to hit follow in the first place becomes more valuable than the content designed purely to get pushed to strangers.
What to do about it now
You don't need to wait for this to pass to start protecting yourself against it.
Build channels you actually own. An email list or a text list doesn't care what a platform's algorithm or opt-out settings are doing. If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, would you still be able to reach your audience?
Make following worth it. Content that only works as a one-off scroll-stopper doesn't build the kind of relationship that survives an algorithm switch-off. Content that gives someone a reason to want more from you, consistently, does.
Ask for the follow directly sometimes. It feels unglamorous, but if platforms are about to make "did they follow you" the line between visible and invisible, it's worth being direct about it instead of hoping people do it on their own.
None of this is about panicking over a bill that's still in draft form, and it's worth remembering a comparable opt-out prompt from Apple only shifted about 27 per cent of Australians a few years back. Most feeds will likely stay algorithm-driven. But if you're running paid ads too, it's worth knowing that fewer people scrolling means fewer ad slots, which tends to push CPMs up. It's about noticing where the ground is shifting and not waiting until it's already moved to adjust. If you want a hand thinking through what your content and follower strategy should look like regardless of what happens with this legislation, that's exactly the kind of thing I help with at The Social Serotonin.