Australia Wants an Off Switch to Toxic Algorithms That Won’t Let Them Quit

Her accounts were full of fitness videos that promised the impossible. Girls she’d never met screamed through the screen, urging her to sign up for risky calorie challenges. On their profiles, some boasted of their height and weight – even how many times they had been admitted to hospital in a sort of perverse competition.

Every night before falling asleep, Varsha would watch a stranger diary what they’d eaten that day online. I was thinking, ‘I don’t need to eat. “I can just watch other people eat,” Varsha tells the BBC. And I realised I was down these very deep rabbit holes, and no matter how hard you tried to get out, you couldn’t.

Now 24 and in recovery from anorexia, Varsha says she regularly sees weight loss content on social media despite all the safety settings being switched on, and an exhaustive list of forbidden phrases.

For the past four years, the then-20-year-old’s feeds have overflowed with content from self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and other individuals from the manosphere. It was a time when Flynn, who was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was insecure, upset with his life and dealing with his mental health. He says he bought into the propaganda.

Countless others have stories of being confronted with content on social media they didn’t ask to see and didn’t want to see, and there have long been accusations that the algorithms curating these platforms harm users. Social media companies say the concerns are exaggerated and that they already offer strong safety safeguards for users. But research worldwide tells a different story.

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