Mentioned in today's edition: Grok, Instagram, free TV, Tesla, Reddit, BYD, Steam, John Gruber. Plus, deals on Bose earbuds, Samsung monitors and free Optus data for Victorians.

The News

X and Grok are finally facing heat for being a global deepfake image-based abuse generator

Elon Musk's xAI is officially feeling the pressure over Grok's role in making sexualised, sometimes criminal, AI deepfakes of women and children as countries are blocking its use. Indonesia and Malaysia have cut off access (Mashable) while the UK has threatened to do so (Guardian). After eSafety announced it was stepping up its pressure (Sizzle), Anthony Albanese criticised X (PM.gov.au) but then literally tweeted on the platform minutes later (X). X — which is now owned by xAI — has limited the creation of deepfakes via tagging Grok... but it's still very available to free and paid users (Verge). Meanwhile, Musk has responded by calling the UK 'fascist' (Yahoo News) because apparently asking to stop mass producing image-based abuse and CSEM = literally 1984. 

The Sizzle: When it comes to technology capabilities, there are two things that matter: what does it do, and how easy does it make it? Deepfakes have been around since 2017. At first they were hard to make, then anyone could make them easily on a computer, then on a phone. Then, Musk plugged it into a social media platform with hundreds of millions of users.

I don’t think this is making a mountain out of a molehill, this isn't people who hate Elon Musk hating on him as usual. This is the deployment of egregious mass image-based abuse machine that allows anyone to abuse with just a few keystrokes! We'll never defeat deepfakes or nudify apps but we can’t accept that global communications platform — used by world leaders and ordinary people alike — has featurised image-based abuse into a subscriber perk.

Related reading: The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto asks why Apple and Google aren't threatening to kick X or Grok out of their app stores despite its use being blatantly against their rules. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says banning X for producing deepfake abuse is censorship.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Instagram is being a bit tricky about 17.5m of its users’ data being posted on the dark web

Meta is trying to hose down Malwarebytes’ claim that someone is selling the sensitive data of 17.5 million Instagram users (Engadget). Malwarebytes said that someone was selling data including phone numbers and even partial physical addresses that were scraped via an "instagram API leak" in 2024 (Cyber Insider). Meta says there's "no breach of their systems" (X) but notably hasn't said if the data is real — which makes me think it is real, and they're just splitting hairs with a "breach" vs "exploit". 

Have I Been Pwned has the data if you want to check if you're caught up in the breach

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Sendle gets returned to sender

Sendle customers received an email out of the blue last night saying the Australian courier and parcel service was "halting all bookings" (OzBargain). Sendle, founded in 2014, got a lot of hype during the pandemic for taking on AusPost and became pretty popular with small business but has struggled since then. Mid-last year, it merged with two other US companies (AFR, $) but then there were some "concerns" raised in the post-merger due diligence that seem relevant (AFR, $). 

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 surprising history of Markdown

Maybe this is one of those things that everyone but me knows but I loved reading this history of the lightweight text formatting language Markdown by Anil Dash. I had no idea that it was founded by Apple super-blogger Daring Fireball's John Gruber! Markdown is a great example of one of those things that is so simple and elegant that you almost can't believe there was a time that it didn't exist. 

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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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.