Rob Nicholls
Elon Musk
Politics

If X owner Elon Musk is miffed about taking down a church stabbing video he’s gonna be seriously triggered when he learns about Australian law

- April 23, 2024 3 MIN READ

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has ordered social media platform “X” (formerly known as Twitter) to remove graphic videos of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Sydney last week from the site. The incident was captured on the church’s livestreamed mass service. In response to this order, X’s owner, Elon Musk, has branded the commissioner… Read more »

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Steve Martin & MIchael Caine
Cyber security

The ATO is Australia’s biggest cyber scams victim, losing $500m & revealing major flaws in the myGov ID system

- August 2, 2023 3 MIN READ

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) paid out more than half a billion dollars to cyber criminals between July 2021 and February 2023, according to an ABC report. Most of the payments were for small amounts (less than A$5,000) and were not flagged by the ATO’s own monitoring systems. The fraudsters exploited a weakness in the… Read more »

Mark Zuckerberg
Business

Whistleblowers accuse Facebook of deliberately taking down important non-news pages during its 2021 fight over paying for news

- May 10, 2022 4 MIN READ

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published information from Facebook whistleblowers, alleging Facebook (which is owned by Meta) deliberately caused havoc in Australia last year to influence the News Media Bargaining Code before it was passed as law. During Facebook’s news blackout in February 2021, thousands of non-news pages were also blocked – including important… Read more »

Global tech

How the world’s biggest tech companies are sanctioning Russia over the Ukraine invasion

- March 7, 2022 4 MIN READ

The world’s five leading tech companies – Google (now Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (now Meta), Amazon and Microsoft – have taken steps to impose significant and (mainly) voluntary sanctions on Russia, in response to its invasion of Ukraine. But the decisions didn’t come unprompted. Ukraine has lobbied the major tech companies in the same way it… Read more »

Global tech

If Facebook bans Australian news, users will have less interest in logging on

- September 3, 2020 4 MIN READ

Facebook has announced it will ban publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram if a proposal to force tech giants to pay for news becomes law. The announcement follows the release of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s draft news media bargaining code, under which Google and… Read more »

Topics

Australia is forcing Facebook and Google to pay the media for news – here’s how it will work

- August 3, 2020 4 MIN READ

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has released its draft news media bargaining code, announced on Friday by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. The draft code allows commercial news businesses to bargain – individually or collectively – with Google and Facebook, in order to be paid for news the tech giants publish on their services. According to… Read more »