Hey! Hope you had a rejuvenating long weekend.

Just a quick plug for something that might interest Sizzlers: Burning Platforms, an Aussie podcast about tech and democracy that I’ve been on a couple of times, is doing a live show ‘How Can Democracy Survive AI’ in most Australian capital cities this month. I’m not being paid for this — just thought some of you might be interested in going along.

The News

Discord ID leak shows the danger of collecting data for age checks

Passports and driver’s licenses given to Discord to prove users’ ages have been leaked (The Verge). Late last week, Discord announced that one of its customer service providers had been hacked, exposing information and data from a “limited number of users” who had contacted Discord’s customer support and trust teams (Discord). Data exposed included government ID for users who had appealed Discord’s age determination, as well as other personally identifying information, including names, contact details and billing information.

The Sizzle: Last week, I wrote at Crikey that one of the possible consequences of the bizarre, rushed teen social media process that’s left tech companies in the dark is that they might fuck it up and leak user data. As you can see, these aren’t hypotheticals! Even the biggest companies implementing these features on their own timelines can still fuck it up! Now imagine we make every social media platform from Facebook to BigFooty do it…

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

eSafety Commissioner orders geoblocking of Kirk assassination footage and other graphic videos

The eSafety Commissioner has formally requested that Elon Musk’s X and Meta geoblock videos of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a brutal American murder made famous by right-wing influencers and a beheading (News dot com, archive link). Julie Inman Grant has sent removal notices over content that were assessed as “Refused Classification” by the Classification Board, meaning that they should not be legally hosted, shared or accessed in Australia, after first flagging the posts with the companies that the videos broke their own rules. Conveniently, the eSafety Commissioner’s office has also just put out research showing that “22% of 10-17 year olds have seen “extreme real-life violence online” (eSafety).

The Sizzle: I do not think it’s good that a regulator is using powers based on archaic ideas about traditional broadcast media to censor what I can see online. It should not be illegal for me to own or share a video of a very public figure’s death, even if it is distasteful.

The power behind the takedown notice relies on the traditional Classification System which was designed for televisions and movies, not the internet. I haven’t spoken to the eSafety Commissioner’s office, but based on their response to other outlets, it appears they’re using this power in this situation because they think platforms aren’t following their own rules around explicit content. I don’t have an issue about requiring major platforms to take steps to protect their users from gore (i.e. requiring them to blur it or whatever) —  but using ill-fit regulation to force their hands is not the way.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Resetting the technology around your home is a great way to remember how much a lot of it sucks

A hard-reset of my home Wi-Fi router has been hanging on my To Do list for about a year. I had forgotten the password to the admin dashboard, so I couldn’t change any of the settings or add an extender I’d bought. Finally, I bit the bullet last night. It was a nightmare.

What was supposed to be a 20 minute job ended up taking more than two hours before I gave up, dejected. Half of my house’s smart devices and the Wi-Fi extender still don’t work. My fingers hurt from typing in my Wi-Fi password using on-screen keyboards controlled by a TV remote. My eyes blurred as I scrolled through settings to choose the right WiFi network to connect to about a million times (apparently my Meross smart plugs only work on 2.4GHz but don’t actually say that anywhere).

As painful as this all was, it was a good reminder to be humbled by using seemingly basic consumer tech devices that are a huge pain in the ass to use. I think tech journalists should have to do a clean reinstall of their home set ups every 18-24 months, just so they can remember what it’s like.

(Have you had any recent run-ins that reminded you how un-user-friendly tech is? Let me know!)

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

The origin story of B2B SaaS is a dream

Shout out to friend of the Sizzle Jeremy Nadel who shared this with me: there’s a delightful Wikipedia article listing cultural works and discoveries that were inspired by a dream. Nestled between things like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Niels Bohr’s discovery of the structure of the atom is …. Salesforce’s user interface. From Bloomberg:

Funny that… most people I know who use Salesforce say its UX is a nightmare 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Am I right, fellas? Try the veal.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.