Physical media fans push back against streaming algorithms, but the harder fight is regulation

On 2 October, The Guardian published a collection of reader accounts from people who say they are returning to physical media, from vinyl and cassettes to CDs and DVDs, to escape recommendation algorithms and the risk of titles vanishing from streaming catalogues. The timing is not accidental. It lands the same week that Australia's under-16 social media ban, the most aggressive piece of platform regulation enacted anywhere, was held up by Time magazine as an example of political courage.

The two stories look unrelated. One is about flea markets and 5,300-CD closets. The other is about a Time100 list that named Australian communications minister Anika Wells among the world's most influential rising stars on 1 October. But they are responses to the same problem: the platforms that distribute culture can also decide what disappears from it, and users have little recourse when they do.

What the physical media readers actually said

The Guardian piece is not a survey. It is testimony, and the numbers in it come from the people quoted, not from research. Ash, 52, a university lecturer from Cornwall, told the paper he has amassed more than 5,000 records and CDs from 1990 to 2009 after a period of streaming-only listening. His complaint is specific: algorithms, he said, "make great suggestions, but it feels like you catch a lot of small fish".

Ruth, 67, a retired professor from Michigan, told the Guardian she owns 5,300 CDs, kept in a walk-in closet, and rents physical film titles by mail from a store in Seattle. She cited unreliable rural internet as a practical reason alongside ownership. "No algorithm is as creative as a well-stocked human brain alive to its actual surroundings," she told the paper.

The sharpest argument came from CJ, 55, a compliance manager in Atlanta, who tied her decision to a specific removal: HBO took roughly 200 episodes of Sesame Street off its service in 2022. "If you can't hold it, you don't own it," she told the Guardian.

"When access to media is so easy to cut off, it makes sense to return to owning what you can, so no one can take it away from you."

That is a licensing complaint, not a nostalgia one. Streaming catalogues are bundles of temporary rights. When those rights lapse or a platform writes down content for tax purposes, the title goes. The Guardian's interviewees describe behaviour that follows logically from that: buying secondhand, ripping, storing, and treating the physical copy as the durable version.

The regulatory track is moving faster than the consumer one

The more consequential development this week is in Australia. Wells was named on the Time100 list on 1 October for her work on the under-16 social media ban, with a testimonial written by former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard. Gillard wrote that Wells had "championed world-leading reforms to protect young people from the harms of social media" and praised her for remaining "steadfast" in the face of "intense opposition from some of the world's largest tech companies".

Wells' response to Guardian Australia was short: "In Brisbane we know premierships are won by the whole team, not one player." She is now working on a digital duty of care framework that would let account holders opt out of algorithmic feeds pushing what the Guardian describes as dangerous and divisive content. That proposal is drawing the same industry pushback as the ban.

Not everyone is celebrating. Shadow communications minister Sarah Henderson said in a statement that "Australians don't judge ministers by glossy magazine lists, they judge them by their actions," and repeated her claim that the ban has failed. She also criticized what she called "draconian powers to control what Australians say and see online". The Guardian notes that questions about the ban's effectiveness and enforcement remain open.

The enforcement record is mixed. In a guest article for IEEE Spectrum published on 25 September, researcher Danica Radovanović wrote that within weeks of Australia's ban, the country's eSafety Commissioner reported platforms had restricted access to 4.7 million under-16 accounts. Two months later, she wrote, one in five Australian teenagers under 16 was still using TikTok and Snapchat, according to parental-control data. Radovanović argues that age-based bans are an incomplete solution. She quotes a 13-year-old named Benjamin telling Le Monde, before France approved its own under-15 ban last January, that if the rules went through, "we won't be able to organize" football matches.

France's law and Australia's are the two most-cited models. Both are being watched by governments in Europe, Asia and some US states that have enacted or proposed similar measures, according to the Guardian.

Meanwhile, US regulators are writing stablecoin rules

Regulatory attention is not only pointed at social platforms. On 24 September the Federal Reserve Board requested public comment on two proposals that would establish a framework for Board-supervised payment stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act. The first would require full backing with permissible reserve assets such as short-term Treasury bills and other high-quality liquid assets, plus standardized capital requirements, risk management standards and rules for firms that safekeep the backing assets. The second would create a tailored application process for banks seeking to issue payment stablecoins, including a business plan and financial information, and a process for appeals and final determinations. The comment period closes 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

That is a slow, procedural story, but it is the kind of rulemaking that determines what platforms can actually do. The same is true of the algorithmic opt-out being drafted in Australia: the principle is easy to state, the compliance regime is not.

Elsewhere: chips, capital and a rejected gas plant

Two other dated items in the dossier illustrate how regulation is reshaping technology markets from different directions. At AutoSens and InCabin Europe 2026 in Barcelona, more than 1,000 engineers, executives and semiconductor experts gathered to work through how Europe's Euro NCAP 2026 protocols are changing automotive sensor design, according to EE Times. The protocols put greater weight on driver state monitoring and child presence detection, and award additional points for systems that detect impairment or respond when a driver becomes unresponsive. Calterah used the show to demonstrate its Dubhe CAL1106AQ SoC, which the company says is the first implementation of IEEE 802.15.4ab sensing in a FiRa 4.0-certified 2T4R UWB chip, with a radar leakage suppression module that can detect small movements such as an infant's breathing. Calterah claims the upgrade can support child presence detection by updating existing keyless entry hardware in software, potentially reducing the need for dedicated 60 GHz mmWave interior radars. Infineon, OmniVision and Aptiv also demonstrated cabin-sensing hardware and software. Aptiv said its single-camera Advanced Occupancy Classification software reached 100% accuracy in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 tests, a company claim reported by EE Times.

In China, regulation and capital are moving in opposite directions. The South China Morning Post reported on 2 October that China's quantitative investing sector added 18 new members to the ranks of funds managing more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in assets this year, citing financial news agency Cailian Press. The firms were among 159 Chinese hedge funds overseeing more than 10 billion yuan each, according to Cailian Press, and the latest entrants included AXQ Capital, Hopeseek Fund and Huanian Fund, according to data provider Wind. The SCMP ties the momentum to technology-driven gains in China's stock market and to the profile DeepSeek gave the sector.

And in North Carolina, regulators took the rare step of rejecting a utility's permit. Canary Media reported on 21 September that the state's Utilities Commission denied Duke Energy's bid to build a 255-megawatt gas plant in Richmond County, a facility estimated to cost $584 million. The 23-page order said the licence was premature because data center growth is too uncertain, noting that "any such anticipated load growth is insufficiently reliable for the Commission to act at this point", and that Duke "needs to demonstrate how the addition of such new generating capacity and its costs will be consistent with the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge". Duke signed that pledge in March along with more than 200 other utilities. Canary Media places the decision in the context of a bipartisan backlash to data centers, with pauses issued by the governors of New York and Texas and executive action in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

What ties these together

The through line is not technology. It is who gets to decide what stays available, and under what conditions. The Guardian's physical media buyers have answered that question privately, by building their own archives. Australia's government, the Federal Reserve Board, Euro NCAP and North Carolina's Utilities Commission are answering it publicly, through rules that determine how platforms, banks, cars and power plants operate. The difference is that private archiving scales to one household. Regulation scales to everyone, which is why the enforcement numbers matter more than the sentiment.