Marketing founder Shelley Friesen on why the comment section – not the budget itself – is shaping what Australians think.

Within hours of Treasurer Jim Chalmers handing down the 2026–27 Federal Budget, social media was flooded. Hot takes. Outrage. Cheerleading. And an enormous amount of commentary from people who, by all accounts, hadn’t read past the headline.

Shelley Friesen, founder of Melbourne Social Co, says the budget response is a textbook example of a phenomenon she’s been watching grow across social media: the death of the independent opinion.

“People aren’t forming views on the budget,” says Friesen. “They’re checking the comments first, scanning the dominant take, and then deciding what they think. The nuance – the CGT detail, the intergenerational trade-offs, the actual numbers – gets lost entirely. What spreads is whatever got the most early traction.”

The comment section as a compass

Friesen, who has spent 15 years studying how people pay attention online, argues that a quiet but significant behavioural shift is underway. Rather than forming a view and then engaging with others, people are increasingly using the comments section as a decision-making tool – checking the room before committing to any position.

“It feels harmless. You watch something, you scroll the comments, you see what people are saying. But what you’re actually doing is outsourcing your opinion before you’ve had a chance to form one,” she says. “And in a week like this one, where the policy detail is genuinely complex, that has real consequences.”

The AI layer making it worse

The problem, Friesen argues, is compounded by the rise of AI-generated commentary. Bot accounts and AI profiles – designed to look like real people with real opinions – are increasingly flooding comment sections across major platforms to manufacture the appearance of consensus.

“We’ve seen this play out in political campaigns internationally. Coordinated AI comment activity, deployed to make a fringe position feel mainstream or a popular one feel contested. If you’re already in the habit of reading the comments before you form your own view, you could be reading a room that’s been staged,” she says.

Friesen notes the budget conversation this week has moved at a pace that outstrips any genuine public understanding of what was actually announced. “The CGT changes alone are genuinely complex. There are real trade-offs. There are people who will be affected in ways that cut across the simple narratives. But nuance doesn’t trend. Outrage does.”

What she’s asking people to do

Friesen issues a simple challenge: pause before you scroll. Give yourself thirty seconds with your own thought before checking what everyone else thinks.

“The ability to form your own opinion – to sit with something complex, to be uncertain, to land somewhere that might be unpopular – is not a small thing. It’s one of the more important things. And it’s worth protecting.”

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