The fight to switch off your algorithm – podcast

Chanel Contos is in her mid-20s and has already changed Australia once.

As she tells Annie Kelly, after she founded Teach Us Consent at university, the advocacy group successfully campaigned to change Australian’s national curriculum to mandate the teaching of sexual consent in schools.

Contos has now set her sights on social media algorithms: how our feeds are curated, distorted and contributing, she argues, to a rise in teenage sexual abuse in Australia and beyond.

Her recent campaign has made its way to parliament, helping to shape a bill that would make it much easier for social media users to scroll algorithm-free.

And it has attracted opposition not just from within Australia, but from the Trump administration too.