The Chaser Report - They've Gone TOO FAR This Time

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Dom and Charles are OUTRAGED at the ABSOLUTE SHIT SHOW being done again by YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Grab your pitchforks, dear listener, and get ANGRY! ---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, have you done Duelingo yet today? Have you actually, have you been on there? Because I'm worried my streak, I haven't done it yet. I haven't done my streak yet. You better.

Dom, you better, what are you doing? Why are you recording this? I might. I've got a two streak freezers. Oh, okay. I can afford to me as two days, but I don't want to because I don't lose gems. No, you'll lose gems. And the respect of the owl, the duolingo owl. You don't want to lose that.

My only friend in this world and my harshest critic. Well, the thing is, Dom, I'm a bit of a duolingo expert. I've been there for 603 days. 6003. Oh, yeah. So just shy of two years. What is amateur hour at the duolingo corral? What?

Yeah, I've 2,070 days. Two thousand and seventy days. Two thousand seventy days. And I can't leave, Charles. I can't quit. You can't quit. This is the greatest thing I've achieved in my life. I mean, children are okay, but only because I can now play Dioringo chess against my daughter.

So you, wait a minute. You played Dioringo chess. What? Yeah, yeah. It's not a language. It's chess. I started. What?

I look, okay. Let's take some ads and we can talk about this. We can also talk about the Albanese government's new privacy laws, the digital duty of care. I am. And they're going to try and beat the algorithm. What do you mean? Well, I mean, you won't see this anywhere else because all the algorithms will hide the news. Yeah.

But the government has announced a plan for the people over the age of 16, are you not covered by the social media law, to be able to see their social media feeds without an algorithm. To opt out. Opt out of the algorithm. This is a world first idea that you won't hear about anywhere else. Look, that's an interesting idea, but does that include duolingo? Because that's the burning issue, Dom.

We've got to be able to opt out of duolingo. Oh my goodness. Charles, don't anger the owl. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to say that. Don't anger the owl. And the bear. Actually, don't poke the bear.

There's a bear called Falstaff too. I think they've forgotten about him in recent times because he's kind of scary. But okay, well, let's take some ads and we'll talk about all of these matters. So, Charles, have you done your duolingo for today yet? No, actually about a week ago, Dom, I decided to give up to your thing. You're giving up, but you're streak. I just quit cold turkey. But Charles, you're streaked.

Cold owl. You won't have any more numbers going. up. I know. I've ruined my street. So, but, but it's amazing how much effort duo went in to sort of guilt trip me to try and get me to stay. So you don't want to anger that owl. So I turned off my notifications on my phone, but somehow, like on all the apps to try and get out of it. Yeah. And no, and then, yeah, no, exactly. And then, and then it appeared last night with this angry face on my lock screen, even though I'd turned off notifications. I don't know how it did it. I presume if you delete Duolingo, it's still there.

Oh no, that's a scam. Because my son actually put me onto this, because he quit first, right? And he said, you can't just delete Geolingo because it locks your YouTube account. What? And so you've got it because he... YouTube account? He'd set it up. So there's a feature apparently in Joyingo where you can make it force you to play duolingo

before you watch YouTube. Oh, yeah, yeah. I opted not to do that. Right. And so my sense of guilt and shame make me to it. He'd put that on. And so the point is that apparently if you then delete the app, it keeps YouTube just locked forever.

So you get him out of his own YouTube. Yeah. And then you can't. I told you, man. You've deleted the app. You can't anger YouTube. Is you your son 16 though? Why is he on YouTube?

What's going on? I don't know. I couldn't possibly coming. We'll get to that. Anyway, so the point is, yeah, and then they've started emailing me as well. This owl has started emailing me about my, my losing my street. So you need the right to disconnect from Duolingo very specifically. I think that's the burning issue. But I'm interested in this opt-out thing. So you're opting out of the

algorithm. So look, there's a whole bunch of new privacy laws coming through the federal parliament and some of them are apparently genuinely quite world leading. So Albo has said, and this is very brave, because Donald Trump is going to come down on him like a ton of bricks, like even harder than Duolingo is coming down on you. Yeah. He says that he wants people over the age of 16 to have genuine and enduring choice about what they see in their feeds. It gives users choice and if big tech companies don't do it, they'll get penalties of more than $100 million. So you can choose to have either algorithm feed

or just your friends and the people you've chosen to follow. But I'm very intrigued by the idea of TikTok or Instagram without an algorithm. Wouldn't it be just incredibly boring? Well, that's what I, Remember from Twitter Like you remember Twitter was lovely Back in the days when it was just people you follow

Organised by time Like we could all get together and laugh At whatever thing it just happened Or Donald Trump saying Coffet was a big one for me I still don't know what he meant But we about a billion people stopped What they were doing

And tried to figure it out And now whenever I open X It's full of blue ticked weirdos So Albo's wanting the internet To go back to sort of what To good Twitter 2013 To pre-Elon Twitter

And pre-Elon Facebook. But that just means all you get is posts from the people you follow. It's literally your stupid friends and your annoying family. So you'll never meet anybody new? Yes. Well, isn't that better than the people who you meet being people who pay Elon Musk to be, to talk about red pilling? But, yeah, okay.

And so. It's called My Feed My Way. So it's the sort of Halcyon days of 2030. He wants to go back to the Abbott era of social media. Well, I mean, this is the thing. I mean, you go on Facebook, frankly, the algorithm stuff is a relief from the family and friends, isn't it? Let's be really honest. No one is doing anything interesting.

You literally go on TikTok or Instagram or whatever to get away. So, yeah, so you can get away from your family. That's what you do. And then you get the little dopamine hit. I think that, like, people will turn it off for five, like people opt out. Yeah. And then they'll go, oh, wait a minute, this is a hellscape of boredom. I might as well go and read a book.

book. But do you know what? On my penny farthing. Yes, I'll read a wax cylinder. I'll listen to a wax cylinder instead of it. I'm just going to go and look at some hieroglyphics. Well, you know what this will mean. The immediate upshot of this will be that no social platform will ever feature elbow again.

Alboes are going to completely disappear. So any social media platform you care to open will be a completely elbow free zone. Yes. And then what will happen is the people who don't out of the algorithm will be just fueled with even more extremism and hate. Because that's the whole point, isn't it? Like, the algorithms, they put stuff in front of you that will activate you and engage you.

So things that create fear or anger or, you know, like transmit really well. And so that's the main. The things that are worst for you. Yeah. But also, have you noticed, the worst thing about the algorithm to my mind isn't just that. It's that when you look at one of something, it expects that you now want to have have 50 of that thing. Yes.

So you watch, let's say you catch up on the latest results from whatever football team you're watching. Yes. And there's no new news, right? My football team has won a game or whatever. Nothing has happened until the week later when the next play. Yeah. But then every video that it gives me will be, oh, do you want to see the classic Arsenal

goals from 20 years ago? And of course I do, so I keep watching it. Like, it's just, it is, it knows our worst proclivities and it serves it up to us. And it polarises. I went to the festival of dangerous ideas. a few weeks ago. Oh, Charles, that's even braver than leaving Duolingo.

Was it safe? I mean, I've never been. I'm too scared. I'm too scared that the ideas talked about at a festival in inner Sydney attended largely, but I'm just going to,

I'm just going to guess here. People are older than us. Very white people. I'm going to guess that the ideas were not really very dangerous. How dangerous were the ideas? I shouldn't judge. I shouldn't charge.

I haven't talked about the festival much because, you know, I always say, you know, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Very cool newspaper. Yeah. Yeah.

But. To it at scale. Look, I happened to see the Tim Minchin speech. Oh, yeah. That. He was a ring in, right? He was a ring in. He was replacing Salman Rushdie.

So, you know, of course, Similar similar sort of billing. And look, less said, the better generally. But he did make one quite interesting point, which is he showed this graph and he said, this is what people generally think of a banana, right? Right. And it just showed a normal bell curve, you know. Okay.

Some people hate them. Most people think they're fine and some people love them, right? That's the general distribution of banana preferences. If you logged on to Facebook or TikTok or whatever, you would think that it was an inverted bell curve that most people either hated bananas or loved bananas and that nobody in their real. right mind just thought bananas. Yeah, they're fine.

Right. Because the algorithm will always serve up the most extreme opinions. Because that's what creates conflict and debate and engagement. That's a pretty good point. And it polarises. And so basically what's been going happening since algorithms came along is you've had this sort of polarisation of every single thing, which is why every single thing is sort of contestable at the moment.

The truth is contestable. I don't agree with that. Well, exactly. See? You would say that. That's what we should do. That's true. It filters out indifference.

And this is our whole problem with the podcast, isn't it, Don? Because we're mostly indifferent about everything except for Bluetooth. Most except for Bluetooth. We will not have. We will not have Bluetooth. No, but it's true. You know what I'm indifferent about? Indifference.

Oh my gosh. I'm indifferent to the rest of all dangerous ideas. Don't cancel me. Do you remember when that Did you remember when it started I might have this wrong And look there are lots of events At Fodi where I sort of thought

That would be fun to go to But I don't really go to events much anymore Maybe in five years on my children Have you know Just hate me But don't you remember Didn't it emerge during that period When like everyone was kind of going

Oh no they're going to criminalise descent Remember that period? I think it was during the Howard era And they're really worried about dissent Sedition and dissent Sedition laws Yeah And all these people went

Oh Oh we've got to make sure that the speech of, you know, white people at the Sydney Opera House isn't going to get cancelled. Yes, that's right. And you know what? It wasn't. It was not cancelled. Surprisingly.

It was, it managed to survive. That wasn't the part that was cancelled. But Charles, what if there hadn't been the festival of dangerous ideas? What if they'd never started it? I feel like we. Yeah, and they should have, they shouldn't have called it that. They should have called it Livid. It would have been that much.

The Livid Festival. Well, there already was a Livid festival. Everything was in the 90s in Brisbane. But that's actually very funny. Like everyone getting angry at the same time as vivid. The Chaser Report Less News More often

I feel like the Chaser did Did we do We at least programmed a festival The Festival of Safe ID Didn't we I think we talked about it I don't actually did it I think we

I think that was in the Chaser annual one year Was the Festival of Safe Idea I had an event I ran an event once That was a parody of that It was very funny Because there were things like You know that milk is quite delicious

and stuff. But that wouldn't survive in the algorithm. Oh, God, no. Yeah. Well, that's why we had to shut the festival down. No one would buy a ticket because of the fucking algorithm. And thankfully, Albo is going to bring back things like the festival of safe ideas. Oh, that's right.

I reckon that would go very well on the thing was. On the ABC now, that is the festival of safe ideas. I couldn't possibly comment. The festival of genuinely dangerous ideas. That was what I had. Oh, that's a good one. ran that event and it was basically I think it mostly

focused on self-harm I also wanted a festival of stupid ideas I thought that would be very enjoyable What are you looking at? AI has unearthed my own Your archives Yeah yeah yeah the thing I can't remember anymore

Didn't you write a book about Dictionary of Terrible ideas? Terrible ideas right Yeah actually a festival of terrible ideas That would be Yeah that would be fun We should count a program it next year Okay

Festival of Terror Fetty Fetti Yeah I reckon we get monastic to that. He'd probably be more interested

in it, quite possibly. Actually, would the first session at the festival of terrible ideas be called the Festival of

dangerous ideas? I feel really bad meaning, laughing about it because I think the ethics centre of people are fantastic.

Like, it's just there's a little bit of lack of self-awareness that the chaser does exist to point out at times like this.

As much as, let's be very honest, we are completely the kind of people who like that stuff. Let's be, hey, if you want to come to the festival of terrible ideas,

hey, we'll make it happen. Okay, so how we're going to do this. Back to the algorithm. Yeah, let's tie this episode in a point, Don. So the government's looking at this stuff at the moment. Yeah. At the right to disconnect, the right to be forgotten. And you still haven't managed to leave Duolingo.

No. Well, I mean, like, I haven't turned out. I think it's like, I've ghosted, you know, like if you're dating somebody and you just, stop turning up. You're quite quick. You're quite quick. You stopped pressing their buttons. Have you, what language were you learning, by the way?

Espanio. Can you say, well, can you say, I quit you forever, you stupid owl in, um. No, no. I only did it for six hundred three days. I read somewhere that they, there's literally like doing three weeks of Spanish classes. Like, like, six and three days is still very, very basic. So, duolingo says it teaches you more in a semester than a college course. But the thing it doesn't mention is,

it's an American college course. Ah, right. So I've done French for five or six years, however it's long as it's been since 20, 2021, to five years. I recently went to France for the first time since I started doing Duolingo. And I realized, I spent all this time doing, and I already had reasonably good French before I started. I don't want to get really good at it.

I couldn't understand people speaking because there's none of that in Duolingo. Yes. So all this effort was completely wasted and I need to find a different system, but I can't quit the owl. So that's point one. Point two to finish this off is that, Charles, we're doing the podcast all wrong. Yeah, we've got to be more outrage. We've got to get rid of the middle of the bell curve.

Yes, we've got to do that. So what should we title this episode? Things I'm angry about. What about the worst decision Albows ever made? What about they've gone and done it again? They've gone and done it again. I love it. Oh, yeah.

Or how dare they? How dare they? Yes. Oh, I love that. We should actually experiment with the episode titles because Lachlan, who does them, and does a great job. It only comes up with some witticism or pun, but this is clearly not getting us the clicks we need.

No, no, it's got to be how dear though. They've gone too far this time. They've gone too far this time. They must be stopped. Who are they? Should they be banned? The festival of dangerous ideas must be stopped. I think that'll get zero listens.

That will get zero listens. Okay, well, that's good. Okay, so we've just solved the income issue. Yep. And look, we're going to have, just because you've made it to the end of the podcast, which probably means you either like or hate listening to the podcast either way around. We're going to do some shows. We're going to tell you about them in Juk.

We aren't doing it today. No. We're locking in the details now. It's going to be a festival of a poorly conceived idea. Yeah. But yeah, no, we're going to do a regular sort of monthly live show next year. Is that a terrible idea or a dangerous idea? Or a good idea.

You can always email us podcast at jaser.com. Yeah, it's very exciting. We'll catch you tomorrow. Part of the Icona Class Network. guys have her goodbye. See ya.