Remind me: how is training children to send video selfies of themselves over the Internet an improvement?

Age-verification is an invasion of privacy. The technologies behind it are gender- and racially-biased and least effective where it most matters - for those ages close to 16. It needs to be abandoned for methods which respect privacy and effectively protect children online. www.theguardian.com/...

The data the age assurance technology trial released doesn't really match the report.... story by @joshnicholas.com and @nickevershed.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

Nice analysis of the data in the age assurance trial report from the folks at The Guardian. The data is dodgy. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

30TB HDDs are in PC shops now, what a time to be alive folks www.scorptec.com.au/product/hard...

I'm told by OAIC that the redactions were made at Kmart's request...

"the compelling lived experience of its senior management" is a pretty cursed phrase, imho

I do not love the large number of [Redacted] in a legal determination that forms a part of public law. If the words and phrases were so important that they were written into the text of the determination itself, then they should be publicly available.

There is a bunch of articles out there that confirm otherwise that it -was- going to apply to everyone, which is a bit weird for her to lie about it having been a "Scare tactic" Even when asked directly and specifically the Deputy Secretary, Communications and Media James Chisholm said "Yes"

"The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, says it has been a “scare tactic” to claim that every Australian will need to have their age checked." It's called 'logic'. Something eSafety might like to try sometime.

eSafety's guidance for the social media teen ban is out: www.esafety.gov.au/industry/reg...

Continuing the fine tradition Australian tradition of appointing Communications Ministers who do not understand how technology works.

Also this very funny section where they point to the piracy website blocking as an example of how people can evade via VPNs but point out they're still blocking sites despite VPNs easily overcoming those blocks...but then say that people stopped using VPNs as much because streaming arrived.

I think the main problem with some of the reporting of the report was they just ran lines from the exec summary and minister comment that everything is fine, when you actually delve into the report that doesn't actually stack up.

New: Australians will need to prove they are over the age of 18 when accessing pornographic websites from 9 March 2026, under new industry codes registered on Tuesday by the eSafety Commissioner. 🔞 Full story on @information-age.bsky.social: ia.acs.org.au/article/2025...

Fun fact: no we can’t! If we say porn in an edition, plenty of email providers will bounce the email On Bluesky? No such problem. porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn p

Somehow I don't think they'd let me use my CyberSecure™ rating labels on the reports.

It’s ludicrous and insulting to suggest that the richest university in Australia can’t afford the two part-time wages to run Meanjin. Also: did they even try to save it? Donation drive? Philanthropic efforts? Offering it to another institution? No. The university council shut it down intentionally.

Going to hear @karenhao.bsky.social speak about her new book Empire of AI tonight, in conversation with @kobotic.bsky.social and an intro by @drwaus.bsky.social chair Lizzie O'Shea.

Meanwhile...

Exclusive: Australia’s second-oldest literary journal, Meanjin, is being shut down today for "financial" reasons, Crikey can reveal.

We are living in a time when lack of trust in government is being exploited and misinformation weaponised to push extremist views into the mainstream. The answer to this is greater openness and more transparency. 🧵1/3

The OAIC's 2023-24 annual report has a great little compare/contrast of the eSafety and an agency that saw an even bigger increase in FOI requests.

One particularly piece of nasty from the FOI bill is that they're increasing the ability for agencies to refuse to confirm or deny that there are documents for your request if they're refusing to release. So even the consolation prize for a failed FOI goes away.

Govt leans heavily on eSafety Commissioner receiving 600 FOI requests in one year. However frivolous they may be, they were overwhelmingly for personal info - so fees wouldn't apply. And at just 1 or 2% of all FOIs, they are not the reason the system is so expensive in money and work-hours.

"Last year public servants spent more than 1 million hours processing FoIs. Not doing policy, not helping people out there with their issues." Processing FOI requests *is* helping people with their issues. That's why they make FOI requests.

I’d go further: why call those 600 requests a vexatious ddos; who is to say they are not the sort of “genuine applications” the minister gets misty-eyed about?

The government's proposed FOI Act amendments are out. Media has focused on the new submission fee, but far more alarming are changes making it easier for govt to block access to public information. Two in particular stand out:

The government is claiming that they are being deluged with FOI requests, particularly ones that aren't for personal information, and so need to make it harder to access public information. It's hard to square this pretext with the reality that FOI request statistics are basically flat.

The process looks rushed, with no public consultation. Who was asking for limits on access to information? The only real beneficiaries are SES members keen to avoid the scrutiny that open government brings.

This is a request for personal information about the applicant, which Labor has said would still be free, so the changes don't help. It's also not anonymous, because you can't ask for your personal information without disclosing who you are, so that part doesn't apply either.

The good thing is that it's being referred to a committee that I'm guessing will get a lot of submissions, and if the Coalition and the Greens hold against it, it'll die.

What does it say about eSafety's ability to regulate the Internet that it was this easy to overwhelm it with a simple script? Has it only just discovered that brigading and bots are a thing?

My new job is looking after this righttoknow service (and a bunch of others). Just another kiwi going to Australia for jobs. Eh.

If the government is really concerned about automated FOI spam there are other ways to address it beyond charging an application fee for an FOI that will inevitably be rejected anyway

This is an excellent response to the "we have to charge for FOI because forren AI bots!" nonsense from the A-G. www.righttoknow.org.au/request/evid...

I’m a foreign government/criminal and I can’t wait to carry out my nefarious ends by filing FOI requests and waiting 6-9 months to get highly redacted documents as long as they aren’t exempt for a wide number of reasons including national security… beware 😈

funnily enough it means that smaller outfits will have to verify everyone, with all the burden that entails great work on building a moat for Facebook et al, really sticking it up to big tech

Labor deciding to charge for FOI requests is just more evidence that they are not interested in liberal democracy.

It is quite frustrating that "the big tech platforms spy on everyone constantly and can figure out your age" is being positioned as a good thing. No it isn't! Mass surveillance is bad for everyone! Including the kids that you claim to want to protect!

Qantas now has a "A.I. Doom" movie category in their in-flight entertainment options ...

I've had a look at the report and it's weird and bad. It's academic cosplay full of advertorial and assertions that aren't supported by actual evidence.

Inquiry and report by 31 October 2025. That is… quite soon.

BREAKING: The Senate has just voted YES to our inquiry into the social media age ban & search engine age verification codes! This isn't just about kids - it's a national age verification and identification system masquerading as being about online safety for children. 🧵

Just in case you were wondering how regulatory capture works in practice.

Time for someone to write "Unsafe At Any Scale".

OpenAI making changes... I feel like the history of tech is basically only making changes to counter foreseeable issues after the worst happens. openai.com/index/helpin...

Except marketers. Always lie to them. It's legal and fun and they deserve it.

Extremely @daedalus.eigenmagic.com areas.

We got burned by an AI freelancer and a few missteps of our own. Here's the full disclosure on that. All I can add from my vantage here is that my work has always been subject to rigorous fact checking. It's sometimes a days long, maddening process, but 100% of the time I am grateful in the end.