00:01Andrew Tate is a regular presence on 18-year-old Zach Robig's social media feeds.
00:07I know that it's being put there to keep me on there and make me angry and get me to
00:12interact with it.
00:13Like many teenagers, Zach has never searched for or been sent Manosphere content, yet it still appears on his feed.
00:20It's sometimes hard to disconnect from it because it is like, you know, politics is like everywhere.
00:26Like Zach, 17-year-olds William and Connor Foulds find extremist videos are pushed by their algorithms.
00:33After that, if I watch the full video, it will come up again and again.
00:36Professor Dan Angus heads up QUT's Digital Media Research Centre.
00:40Once you get enough of these young men watching this content, then that gives signals to those systems that it
00:47may do well in front of the rest of that audience.
00:50Negative toned information may be able to sustain longer attention.
00:55Researchers have masqueraded as young men online and found their feeds are quickly taken over by extremist content.
01:03On average, over 70% of the content are considered as anti-feminist.
01:09The federal government recently introduced laws giving social media users the option to opt out of their algorithms.
01:16But experts say it's becoming an increasingly complex area to navigate.
01:20We can't really turn the algorithms of social media off completely because algorithms are through the entire experience from moderating
01:26harmful content off them, for example, through the recommender systems and such which drive the order of content within our
01:33feeds.
01:34Professor Angus believes a wider conversation is needed.
01:37What does an alternate social media feed look like where we give users greater agency?
01:46Episode 89
01:47Professor Angus
01:48Professor Angus
01:48Professor Angus
01:49Professor Angus
Comments