The Weekly Cybers #49
The continuing saga of Australia’s eSafety rules, some thoughts on digital childhood, another slap down for Craig Wright, and much more.
Welcome
At the end of a year when Australia’s ongoing battle with the online giants has dominated the digital news, it’s only fair that there’s yet more changes to the eSafety rules — although to be fair we knew these were coming.
Our eSafety Commissioner has been talking up our social media ban for under-16s, and the rest of the world seems fascinated.
And as Australian Craig Wright is told yet again that he isn’t Satoshi Nakamoto, we note that the world our kids are experiencing is not the one we grew up in.
Thanks very much for supporting The Weekly Cybers through 2024. I hope you’ve found it useful. See you next year.
The continuing saga of Australia’s eSafety rules
The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has given online platforms two more months to finalise their industry codes of practice for protecting children from “online pornography and other high-impact content”.
She said the industry needs more time to consider how the newly-legislated social media ban for under-16s might interact with these existing requirements and the technology needed to implement them.
The industry had put forward two draft codes last year, but these were rejected. They now have until 28 February 2025 to submit new versions.
Meanwhile two other codes come into force this Sunday 22 December, the Designated Internet Services (DIS) and Relevant Electronic Services (RES) standards for file and photo storage services, as well as chat and messaging services, to prevent their systems being misused for “the most harmful online content including child sexual abuse material and pro-terror content”.
This is the so-called class 1A and 1B online material (PDF).
Age assurance by looking at hand movements?
In an interview with America’s NPR published on Thursday, Inman Grant reiterated that the the social media platforms will choose their own age verification or assurance methods.
For your writer, one section jumped out:
“I met with an age assurance provider last week in Washington, DC, who is using an AI-based system that looks at hand movements and has a 99% success rate... Say you do a peace sign then a fist to the camera. It follows your hand movements. And medical research has shown based on your hand movement, it can identify your age. So there are some innovative solutions out there.”
I call bullshit. Australia has already had a disastrous experience with estimating age via wrist x-rays. This seems little different.
STOP PRESS: Just as I was finalising today’s newsletter, at the Guardian Josh Taylor found a reference in the age assurance industry’s own submission that pours water on the commissioner’s claim.
There were also indications that Inman Grant continues to be unhappy with the blanket ban for under-16s.
When asked why the age 16 was chosen she said:
“We’ve set out arbitrary numbers for the age of a child for a long time. Many social media apps require users to be 13. But it really depends on the actual circumstances of the child... The prime minister decided to go with 16, but there were other proposals for 14, or 15.”
And when asked about the origins of the age-restriction policy she hosed down one of its key drivers.
“I think the genesis of this movement has been Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Anxious Generation, and he even admits some of the research is mixed. And it’s true that it is not necessarily causal. But in many circumstances, it’s certainly correlational. And this law is focused on the addictive design and features, and dark patterns that emerge on social media platforms.”
It’s fair to say that Haidt’s book has received mixed reviews, with some calling it bad science.
Inman Grant also repeated her assertion that “messaging services and gaming apps will be exempt” from the ban, even though there is no such carve-out in the legislation.
There’s no Australian internet, apparently, just Australian rules
Also curious is this quote from Inman Grant’s media release:
“There is of course no Australian internet, so these standards will require changes by companies no matter where they are headquartered.”
This news comes as a shock to me, given that I’m using the Australian internet to write this very newsletter. And probably a shock to Russia, which has been testing disconnecting from the rest of the world.
Your kids aren’t experiencing your own childhood
A recent blog post from health services researcher and educator Ben Harris-Roxas got me thinking this week. Getting free from the slop machine is about choosing social media and other feeds that aren’t driven by algorithms, but are collated by actual humans.
One comment highlighted how things have changed.
One of my kids was recently quizzing me about Mastodon, and he pulled me up when I said I like the chronological feed. “What does that mean? If there’s no algorithm, how do they know what you want to see?” I realised he’s never known a chronological social media feed. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook abandoned theirs before he was born. The idea that all I see are the accounts I follow, and that I see everything they post, in the order they post, broke his brain a bit. He didn’t like it.
At almost the same time, my attention was drawn to a recent report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Communications and media in Australia: Trends and developments in viewing and listening 2023–24.
Some highlights from the executive summary:
- The proportion of Australian adults watching free-to-air TV has declined from 71% in 2017 to 46% in 2024.
- More Australian adults are using paid subscription streaming services, increasing from 29% in 2017 to 69% in 2024.
- The number of us listening to FM radio has fallen from 73% in 2017 to 52% in 2024, with AM radio falling from 35% to 20% over the same time.
- Older Australians are more likely to listen to traditional radio, with 84% of those 75 and over listening in 2024. In contrast, only 28% of 18 to 24-year-olds listened to radio content.
- More Australian adults are streaming music, increasing from 37% in 2017 to 73% in 2024.
There’s plenty more handy statistics, and ACMA has helpfully provide the data as CSV files. The indications are that in general there’s plenty more change to come.
Also in the news
- Meta has agreed to a $50 million settlement with Australia’s information commissioner over its unlawful release of personal information to Cambridge Analytica. Users who might be eligible for a share of this cash will be notified “early next year”.
- “The Australian Federal Police [AFP] has said that its investigation into the Ghost criminal messaging app, which was taken down by a global law enforcement operation in September, is continuing to lead to arrests,” reports Cyber Daily.
- Meanwhile, the new law which retrospectively made legal the AFP’s data collection in Operation Ironside against the AN0M encrypted network has been criticised by top lawyers, saying it establishes a dangerous precedent. That law was the Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill.
- Optus allegedly signed up a woman with intellectual disability to 24 contracts, just one of hundreds of cases the telco is being sued over by the ACCC.
- Australian Craig Wright, who a court found had falsely claimed to have invented Bitcoin, has been given a one-year suspended sentence for breaching a court order to stop suing Bitcoin developers.
- Industry and science minister Ed Husic announced that the government will develop a National AI Capability Plan to grow investments in the sector, strengthen AI capabilities, boost skills, and “secure economic resilience”. “It is due to be delivered towards the end of 2025, following both a targeted and public consultation period,” says the press release.
- Husic also announced a new memorandum of understanding on AI cooperation with Singapore.
- Ian Oppermann has been appointed as the federal data standards chair for Digital ID and the consumer data right, starting 1 March 2025. He was previously the NSW government’s inaugural chief data scientist, and involved heavily with the state’s groundbreaking digital driver license and Service NSW app.
- “The government has been asked to compile and maintain an independent map of mobile and broadband service availability and providers, accurate to a ‘specific location’ or ‘area’ level,” reports iTnews.
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Elsewhere
- From Scimex, “A new psychological study has shown that when people know they are under surveillance it generates an automatic response of heightened awareness of being watched, with implications for public mental health”. Full paper: Big brother: the effects of surveillance on fundamental aspects of social vision.
- More than 140 Facebook moderators in Kenya have been diagnosed with severe PTSD, “caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism”. The effects on the workers have been horrible.
- UNSW Sydney is the first university in the Asia-Pacific region to sign an Education Agreement with OpenAI.
- The BBC has complained to Apple after the latter's AI news summary made up a headline, which was wrong.
- From the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, a report on digital equity and inclusion. It noted, among other things, that in Western Sydney some 28% of students rely solely on their mobile phones to complete their schoolwork. Only 28% of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and 19% of asylum seeker and refugee students are seen to have the level of digital inclusion needed for their education.
- A US study has shown that companies issuing return-to-office mandates are losing their best talent.
Inquiries of note
- Treasury has opened a consultation on the planned mandate for businesses to accept cash when selling essential items, with exemptions for small business. Submissions close 15 February 2025.
What’s next?
Parliament is currently on its long summer break until Tuesday 4 February 2025.
This is the final edition of The Weekly Cybers for 2024. We’ll return on Friday 10 January 2025. May you be getting the break you deserve.
DOES SOMETHING IN THE EMAIL LOOK WRONG? If there’s ever a factual error, editing mistake, or confusing typo, it’ll be corrected in the web archives.
The Weekly Cybers is a personal look at what the Australian government has been saying and doing in the digital and cyber realms, on various adjacent topics, and whatever else interests me, Stilgherrian, published every Friday afternoon (nearly).
If I’ve missed anything, or if there’s any specific items you’d like me to follow, please let me know.
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This is not specifically a cyber *security* newsletter. For that that I recommend Risky Biz News and Cyber Daily, among others.