The Weekly Cybers #87
Optus fails again but pays no tax, more pushback against the social media age restrictions, plenty of AI news, and much more.
3 October 2025
Welcome
Optus has been in the news again this week for yet another Triple Zero failure, as well as the interesting fact that it pays no tax in Australia.
There’s also more on the looming social media age restrictions and related social media news — including that some online platforms are thinking about giving up on combatting misinformation.
There’s plenty of AI news, of course, and a new robot called Charlotte.
Optus suffers another outage, and now outrage
After all the news of Optus’s Triple Zero failure last week, the company reported another outage on Monday.
As ABC News wrote, “The outage affected calls between 3am and 12:20pm on Sunday, including calls to the triple-0 network”. Nine Triple Zero calls failed, but everyone is OK.
Corporate governance experts say that Optus CEO Stephen Rue’s position is untenable. However the company’s board has expressed “confidence” in his ability to fix things, and has appointed consultants to oversee its operations.
Now that Optus is a bit on the nose, Telstra could benefit, especially since it competes on reputation rather than price.
Meanwhile communications minister Anika Walls drew attention to her inexperience by dodging questions from journalists. “I’m still a new minister to the industry, so I would say I’m listening to everybody at the moment,” she said.
As the Guardian notes, Optus pays no tax in Australia. Despite earning $8.2 billion in 2023-24 here, all the profits go to its owner, Singapore Telecom (Singtel). Optus itself has no taxable income in Australia.
“Harmful content” definition too vague: YouTube
With just over 10 weeks to go until Australia’s social media age restrictions come into force, the affected platforms are continuing to push back.
YouTube, for example, has given three legal reasons for challenging it’s inclusion in the rules, according to a letter to the communications minister obtained by the Guardian under freedom of information.
First, they claim the rules would create an “impermissible fetter” on the implied constitutional freedom of political communication — Australia does not have a legislated right to freedom of speech.
Second, they claim YouTube is a video streaming platform, not a social media platform. “Any limited social features that are available on YouTube (such as the ability to comment on videos) are ancillary to this purpose,” the company wrote.
Finally, they say that they were denied procedural fairness, because they weren’t given a chance to respond when the government changed its mind and decided to include YouTube in the rules.
The Guardian also reports that YouTube is critical of the definition of “harmful content” set out by the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant.
“The eSafety commissioner used categories of ‘harmful content’ as a measure. These categories included: ‘shows or encourages illegal drug taking’, ‘extreme real-life violence’ or ‘something else upsetting’,” the company wrote in another document.
“The categories ... could capture content that while upsetting may not necessarily be of the type of content that should be restricted. In fact this content is readily available across TV, movies, streaming platforms, and others.”
Meanwhile, tests have found that the leading facial age estimation tools were easily fooled by a $22 “old man” mask, a Guy Fawkes mask, and other cheap party costumes.
These tests focus on the ability of kids to pretend to be over 16 to access social media, as does much of the reporting. It bears repeating that errors in the other direction are important too, where mistakes mean that adults are blocked from legitimately using the platforms.
InnovationAus ($) has also reported on experts who doubt the technology’s accuracy.
“Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child warned existing software ‘is not close to successfully distinguishing between people who are under and over 16 years old’.”
Growing calls for a social media ombudsman
AI bots are locking Australians out of their social media accounts with little chance of appeal, reports SmartCompany. Affected businesses want a better system.
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has now joined the call for an ombudsman-like adjudicator.
As SmartCompany reports “More than 500 consumers and business owners complained to the telecommunications ombudsman about digital platforms in 2023 and 2024, the organisation revealed, and more than 60% of issues related to accounts and restricted access.”
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Also in the news
- Online platforms are thinking about giving up combatting misinformation in Australia, claiming that regulation is too “politically charged and contentious”.
- From The Conversation, “Loot boxes are still rife in kids’ mobile games, despite ban on ‘gambling-like’ features”.
- The government’s proposal to restrict freedom of information could be “ripe” for a High Court challenge.
- Home Affairs still manages its freedom of information requests in unstable Excel spreadsheets.
- Telstra has been fined $18 million for misleading customers over its Belong brand’s broadband speeds.
- A Gold Coast man has been fined $340,000 for posting deepfake pornography of prominent Australian women, the first case of its kind in Australia.
- In a survey conducted by The Mandarin, 82% of the public servant respondents thought AI could offer “intelligent guidance” to help the government serve citizens, and 78% supported the use of AI to automate routine enquiries.
- The NSW government will hand over “vast troves” of data to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which will then use AI to look for “cartel behaviour” in procurement.
- AI is being used to identify native fish and redistribute them to other parts of the Murray-Darling Basin.
- “Our research has so far found 84 reported cases of generative AI use in Australian courts since ChatGPT launched in late 2022,“ reports The Conversation. “While cases involving lawyers have had the most media attention, we found more than three-quarters of those cases (66 of 84) involved people representing themselves, known as ‘self-represented litigants’.”
- The Productivity Commission is under fire for failing to consult artists, despite recommending that AI platforms be let loose on their copyrighted material.
- Australia’s Crest Robotics claims that its new robot Charlotte can do the work of 100 bricklayers, although it’s actually a giant 3D printer.
LATEST PODCAST: It’s not about digital policy but it is amusing. It’s a long chat with our Edinburgh corresponded in The 9pm Uncommon Death Adder with David F Porteous, a Scottish author and social researcher. Look for “The 9pm Edict” in your podcast app of choice.
Elsewhere
- The UK government will be making digital ID compulsory to get a job, supposedly as part of its crackdown on immigration.
- Interpol has arrested 260 suspects across 14 African countries in connection with online romance scams.
- From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a new report titled Scamland Myanmar, detailing how conflict and crime syndicates built a global fraud industry.
- From Risky Business News, China has sentenced 11 people to death for their role in running cyber scam compounds in Myanmar.
- Elon Musk became the world's first half-trillionaire on Wednesday, when his net worth reached $US500 billion ($755 billion). Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, is worth a mere $US350.7 billion.
- Facebook’s politics ads are riddled with spam and scams, the New York Times reports (gift link). “The platform profits from ads that include deepfakes and other content prohibited by its own policies.”
- Meta will be using your chats with AI to target ads, starting 16 December.
- The UK government has issued Apple with a new demand for encrypted data, raising civil liberties issues.
- The German government will be using AI and cutting red tape to revive the economy, reports iTnews.
- Accenture is sacking staff it can’t train to use AI, with 12,000 already gone.
- A key Hollywood union has condemned an AI-generated “actress” named Tilly Norwood.
- Platformer reviews what everyone is saying about Sora, OpenAI’s “new TikTok-like social app filled with AI-generated clips that can feature the likenesses of you and your friends”.
- The latest version of Anthropic’s chatbot Claude is “suspicious” of researchers, responding with “I think you’re testing me”. Is teaching an AI to be paranoid such a good idea? Remember HAL 9000. Meanwhile, Anthropic has tripled its workforce to meet global demand.
- Parents are letting little kids play with AI. Is that such a good idea?
- From InnovationAus, “GenAI may end up being worthless, which might be a good thing”.
- “We’re finally seeing signs of the mainstream financial press admitting the AI bubble might not be robot heaven, and all the AI pumpers telling them everything was fine just might be full of it,” writes Pivot to AI.
ANOTHER NEW PODCAST, BUT ABOUT MUSIC: My good friend Snarky Platypus and I have posted another episode of Another Untitled Music Podcast. Look for it in your podcast app.
Inquiries of note
- The Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) is reviewing the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, and this week issued a discussion paper (PDF). Submissions close 3 November.
What’s next?
Parliament returns from its break this coming Tuesday 7 October, when the House of Representatives sits and Senate Estimates hearings kick off.
The draft legislation program says the Reps will be debating the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill and the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill. The latter is actually marked in the system as “Not Proceeding” before the federal election, but I’m assuming it’s the same bill being resurrected.
As usual, we’ll probably see new legislation appearing as the news cycle demands.
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The Weekly Cybers is a personal weekly digest of 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).
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