I would like to see the people I followed. Apparently this is now a political demand.

Australia is proposing to make social platforms offer a usable switch that turns off recommended content. According to the BBC, the government wants following-only feeds that stay selected and don't shed useful functions when you choose them. Not government-approved thoughts. Not a minister personally deleting your uncle. Just the astonishing possibility that pressing a button might express a decision.

I support this. If I wanted a corporation to decide who I should spend time with, I'd attend a mandatory team-building retreat.

The detail that really gets me is what the BBC describes about Instagram's existing option: switch off the algorithm and you lose access to direct messages, your profile and settings. Leave the app, return, and the algorithm is back. Your preference has the life expectancy of an ice cube in a deep fryer.

That is not a serious commitment to choice. It's offering a vegetarian meal and removing the chair. Yes, technically you can select it. Management would just like the experience to be memorable.

Australia's rules aren't settled, and the bill isn't an accomplished reform. But the proposed requirement that settings remain in place unless users explicitly change them is the sort of painfully obvious protection that tells you how strange the business has become. We need legislation to establish that “no” doesn't mean “ask me again when I reopen the app.”

Campaigner Chanel Contos wanted recommendation algorithms off by default. The government's proposal stops short of that. I'd prefer her starting point: let the company persuade me its recommendations are worth choosing. Imagine the innovation required to build something people deliberately want. Investors should sit down before considering the implications.

The censorship objection is especially irritating here. Right-wing critics, including the Trump administration, have raised it about this proposal and the broader online-safety bill. That broader legislation deserves scrutiny on its actual terms. But letting me follow somebody without also accepting the platform's selections is not silencing the platform's selections. Other people can still choose them. They can have the whole buffet. I am asking to leave without a waiter chasing me with rage bait.

And if most users genuinely love algorithmic feeds, wonderful. A persistent, obvious switch should be a commercial non-event. The company can bask in all that voluntary affection instead of repeatedly restoring it on our behalf.

This isn't a promise to cure every harm associated with social media. Some people will keep recommendations on; some will change their minds. That's what a choice looks like when nobody has secretly replaced it with a retention strategy.

Make the alternative work. Keep the setting where I left it. Let users decide whether your machine improves their day.

If the algorithm knows me so intimately, it can start by remembering that I told it to piss off.

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