Chanel Contos on the fight to turn off your algorithms
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How quickly does misogynistic content appear for new male users?
I've been talking now for about twenty three minutes. That's how long it takes for extreme misogynistic content to appear on a boy or man's screen after they've signed up to social media platform. The boy doesn't even need to tell the server that he's a male. They'll know within seconds. Depending on his habits and the first few pieces of content they show.
Speaking at the press club this week, consent education advocate Chanel Contos outlined how social media companies are feeding misogynistic content to young men online.
It may be a pickup artist course, unregulated steroids or peptides, or access to an exclusive club. Quote unquote evidence-based misogyny underpins the various streams of misogyny with pseudoscientific evidence, biological claims, decontextualized statistics, and misinterpretations of psychology used to scientifically prove women's inherent inferiority and men's victimization.
Now she wants the government to compel these companies to give people the option to restrict their algorithm.
We're not asking them to stop, we're demanding that they're obliged to clearly ask us first. And then for us to be able to turn our algorithms on and off at will, for any reason, at any time, with the ability for different preferences on different platforms. This, for the first time, would introduce informed and affirmative consent to our screens.
So can and should the algorithm be contained? And would social media companies even comply? I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to Seven AM. Today, CEO of Teach Us Consent, Chanel Contos, on the damage the algorithm is doing and the next tech frontier.
It's Friday, September fourth. Shell, obviously over the last few years, algorithms have become more efficient, and that's partly because the tech has improved so much. But could you take me back to when you first noticed that your social media feeds were becoming something different to what they used to be? Something that was more addictive.
Yeah, I remember two very distinct shifts as a digital native myself. And I think the first was around 2016 when the chronological order of the feat got changed for kind of like what got the highest engagement.
What is the proposed opt‑in model for algorithm consent?
And obviously I follow my friends and family on Instagram, but I also follow celebrities or like famous accounts or businesses or things. And I do remember suddenly seeing a lot more of those people than like my own friends and family and it being much more Posts that get hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of likes, obviously overpower. my best friend's holiday photo. Um, and then there was another very noticeable shift I felt in twenty twenty. And I remember I simultaneously downloaded TikTok and also Instagram started to Give more recommended content than not recommended content, I felt. And that is, yeah, I guess reflective of the way that the trend has gone. And I remember the first time I downloaded TikTok being like, oh my God, this is insane.
And now I feel like all platforms are kind of like that. And it's they they set a new standard of what an algorithm could be and is.
And so tell me a bit about what we know of the specifics of surveillance here. How minutely is our behavior tracked on these apps and then fed back into the algorithm?
Oh, everything is tracked about it. Like every part of the screen we touch, everyone we set it to, how many seconds we watch it for. liking it, how quickly we scroll, like it learns things about videos that instantly will know if it will make someone scroll past it or not. If someone's a dog person, it will pick up on that instantly and And it's not just our individual habits that are monitored, it's also the like networks of habits. So how our friends interact with things and also how people in our demographics interact with things. So the algorithm is informed by data that knows a lot about us as individuals personally and it also knows a lot about our demographics. So that experiment of like 23 minutes to sign up to social media and be fed extreme misogynistic content, you actually don't even need to tell the app that you are a boy or man.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How quickly does misogynistic content appear for new male users?
0:00–2:17
2
What is the proposed opt‑in model for algorithm consent?
2:17–4:14
3
How are users’ behaviors tracked and used by social media algorithms?
4:14–5:42
4
Can users toggle algorithms on and off for different platforms?
5:42–7:22
5
Do people understand how algorithms shape the content they see?
7:22–9:52
6
Why is the teen social‑media ban not enough and what is Fix My Feed?
9:52–11:27
7
How does AI‑generated content amplify algorithmic engagement?
11:27–13:28
8
How does consent education address gender‑based violence and boys’ involvement?
13:28–15:41
Speakers
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