The Netherlands forced Meta to let users ditch algorithmic feeds. Here’s what happened

On Tuesday, the Australian federal government announced a long-awaited amendment to the Online Safety Act, outlining a digital duty of care to protect Australians from preventable online harms. The bill will be discussed by parliament before the end of the year. While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has presented the legislation as “world leading”, the European Union has had something similar in place for a while now. The EU Digital Services Act came into effect in 2022. Like in Australia’s draft regulation, it gives users more power to choose what their social media feeds look like. It requires companies to provide the option of a feed in which content is not based on “profiling” – algorithmic content selection based on how you previously interacted with the app. You would assume, then, that European users already have a very different experience of social media apps compared to people in Australia. But that’s not the case (more on that in a moment). Due to a 2025 court ruling, the Netherlands is an exception, with an Instagram app that really does look slightly different. But is the Dutch version of Instagram a good blueprint for what we want in Australia? What happened in the EU? The Digital Services Act requires large social media platforms (with more than 45 million monthly users in the EU) to let users opt for non-personalised content (content recommended by the algorithm). When it came to platforms actually implementing the act, research has shown that social media companies didn’t make it easy for users to change their settings. Some critics have called this “malicious compliance”, where platforms do what the law orders, but in such a clunky way that users don’t actually enjoy the option and stick with the default, algorithmic experience. Which leads us to the Netherlands exception. In 2025, Dutch digital rights group Bits of Freedom won a court case arguing Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) was not compliant with the Digital Services Act. The court ordered Meta to add an easily accessible option for Facebook and Instagram users to get rid of algorithmic recommendations. Non-compliance would lead to substantial fines. As a result, Dutch users have more options to shape the way they experience Instagram compared to users elsewhere, including other European nations. What does Instagram look like in the Netherlands? The difference isn’t as major as you’d think. Australian users already have the option to change their feed on Instragram. You can do this by clicking on the Instagram logo at the top of your screen and choosing “following”. This brings up a feed with posts from people you follow. (“Favorites” presents a feed from people you’ve added to a special category.) In Australia, users can choose a hidden ‘following’ feed but it doesn’t stay on by default and hides all other app features. Instagram In “following” mode, you can’t use many of Instagram’s normal functionalities, such as sending private messages. And the option doesn’t stay on by default: when you open Instagram again, you’re brought back to the regular, algorithm-governed feed. By contrast, when Dutch users click on the Instagram logo, they can choose not only between favourites or followers, but also a “voor jou” (for you) feed. This option is the one with algorithmic content recommendations. In the Netherlands, ‘for you’ is the algorithmic feed which users can opt into – or not. Instagram Unlike in other countries, whatever option users in the Netherlands choose will be remembered when they open Instagram again. Regardless of which feed they choose, they can also use all of Instagram’s functionalities such as direct messaging. Arguably, the Dutch version of Instagram does give users more choice. However, just like for Australian users, you need to know how to get to these feed options. The Dutch court order explicitly states users must be made aware of the new options through a pop-up. Some Dutch Instagram users I spoke with vaguely remembered getting a pop-up, whereas others didn’t. How can Australia learn from this? Australia’s draft legislation lists a number of harmful design features and obliges social media companies to implement “user empowerment tools” so they can turn these features off. However, there are no requirements for the way in which these empowerment tools are presented to users. This could lead to the same “malicious compliance” situation as is currently seen in the EU. To address this issue, the Australian government could specifically require social media companies to make a “following” feed the default option. That way, users would only see posts from accounts they follow without having to enable any special settings. Alternatively, Australian law could require social media companies to not bury any settings behind a logo or deep in the app. The Dutch case shows a pop-up is not necessarily helpful. A lot of effort, then, would have to be put into educating the public about the new powers they have over the algorithm. Other experts have proposed the idea of algorithmic choice, which may give users even more control – choosing what types of feeds to follow and how those feeds prioritise information. Unless forced to do so, big tech companies are unlikely to implement features that go against their business model – to keep us all on the apps as long as possible. As we have seen in the Netherlands, a design change still required a court ruling. And many European users are still waiting for a meaningful option to take control over their social media feeds.