09/09/2026
🤔 Well, this is interesting. The Australian Government is proposing legislation that would allow us to switch off the algorithms deciding what appears in our social media feeds.
We think this is probably a good thing.
We’ve all been sucked into the vortex of the algorithm. You watch one video, pause on one post or search for one slightly odd thing and, before you know it, your entire feed has decided this is your personality now. And that’s before you try working in marketing.
Our feeds are full of things we’ve researched for clients. The algorithm currently has no idea whether we’re interested in beauty, pest control, satellite communications, email marketing or executive health assessments. It has simply decided we are very complicated people.
That can be funny. It is far less funny when young people are being drawn into increasingly extreme content around misogyny, eating disorders, self-harm or violence.
Teach Us Consent has been advocating for greater control over our feeds for some time. Its position is actually stronger than the proposed legislation: algorithms should be opt-in, rather than something switched on automatically that we have to find our way out of later.
There is a trade-off, though.
Algorithms can be genuinely useful. They help us discover new ideas, people, products and businesses we would never have found by looking only at the accounts we already follow. Small businesses, in particular, have benefited enormously from that reach.
And human nature being what it is, offering an opt-out doesn’t mean everyone will use it. Most of us are very good at accepting the default and getting on with our day.
But if enough people do switch off algorithmic feeds, it could have an interesting effect on marketing. Businesses may have to work harder to become accounts people actively choose to follow. It could also make the customers and audiences they already have even more valuable.
Marketing tends to over-index finding the next customer. Perhaps this shift is another reason to think about the whole customer lifecycle.
What happens after someone buys? Do we stay in touch? Are we still useful when we aren’t trying to sell something? Have we given people a reason to come back, follow us or recommend us?
Algorithms have given businesses access to an extraordinary amount of attention.
If some of that changes, the value of the people who have already chosen you only goes up.
So, our question to you is: if algorithmic reach becomes even less reliable, do you invest more in finding new audiences, or getting better at keeping the ones you already have?
