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Australia's promise to YouTube, cybersecurity journo cancels US travel and AI is taking over music platforms

Plus: a guide to destroying a small language online

Author

Cam Wilson
April 17, 2025

Issue 2315 - Thursday 17 April 2025

Aaah yes, sorry today’s Sizzle was extra delayed. I had a late-breaking story about the Liberal Party accidentally exposing what data they’re collecting on some voters (Crikey, $).

Anyway, I also have some personal news: I’ve written a book with Ariel Bogle: CONSPIRACY NATION: Exposing the dangerous world of Australian conspiracy theories.

How sick is the cover? Designed by George Saad

It’s got a big tech angle, predictably, and it’s good! I won’t shill too much but if you want, you can pre-order it here (Bio.To).

Folks…. have an incredible weekend. Talk to you on Tuesday!

The News

Communication minister’s teen social media ban promise to YouTube shows how tech policy ‘consultation’ is rigged

Australia’s communication minister promised the YouTube CEO that their service would be excluded from the teen social media ban (AFR, $). By the time that Michelle Rowland wrote to Neal Mohan in December, we already knew that the government wanted to exclude it. So what’s the big deal? Well, the government is simultaneously running a policy development process that is supposedly considering the best way to do the ban — including supposedly consulting on whether to ban YouTube. It’s bullshit! Discord — which can be described as either the gamer’s Slack if you’re being nice, or the pervert’s Microsoft Teams if you’re being mean — is now already requiring some Australian users to scan their faces or provide ID to verify their ages (Gizmodo).

CVE survives but cybersecurity experts won’t travel to US

The CVE program lives to fight another day, thanks to a last minute extension of funding from the US government (IT News). America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency has extended the funding, which was set to lapse, for another 11 months. But this very close brush with death was enough to spawn a new CVE Foundation that doesn’t sit within the US government (TheCVEFoundation). Former US cyber chief and now-Trump admin target Chris Krebs promises he’s going to fight back against their persecution, but has also resigned from his company to avoid drawing them into the fight (WSJ, gift link). Meanwhile, Patrick Gray, host of the globally popular cybersecurity podcast Risky Business and friend of the Sizzle, has cancelled travel to the US over fears that he might get detained due to his relationship to Krebs, who he co-hosts a podcast with (Crikey, $)

Online music platforms and Australian radio are being taken over by AI

About one in five songs uploaded to French music platform Deezer are now AI-generated, according to the company (Reuters). Deezer says it’s getting detecting 20,000 AI-generated tracks uploaded each day, which has doubled from just four months ago. The company is trying to detect them because it offers users the ability to filter out AI music slop and because AI-generated music presents a copyright risk. Down under, however, our media is leaning into it. Six months ago, ARN replaced one of its hosts with an AI generated person — curiously given the persona of a woman called “Thy” who does not appear to be white — without acknowledging it (AFR, $).

Leftovers

  • Unsolicited email from Liberal Party directed voter to data harvesting operation when they clicked unsubscribe (ABC News)

  • Inside Telstra's Triple Zero investigation into fatal fire (Information Age)

  • Playing the Player: Unfair digital gaming practices and their impact on Australians (Consumer Policy Research Centre)

  • Australian Cyber Network releases inaugural State of the Industry 2024 report (CyberDailyAU)

  • TikTok is adding community notes, but it's taking a different approach than Meta and X (Business Insider)

  • Nvidia faces US$5.5 billion charge from restricted chip sales to China (IT News)

  • Apple says zero-day bugs exploited against ‘specific targeted individuals’ using iOS (TechCrunch)

  • Older people who use smartphones ‘have lower rates of cognitive decline’ (The Guardian)

  • Marco Rubio Kills State Department Anti-Propaganda Shop, Promises ‘Twitter Files’ Sequel (WIRED, $)

  • This ICE-snitching app is actually promoting a meme coin (The Verge)

  • Venezuelan migrants relied on clickwork to survive. Now AI is replacing them (Rest of World)

  • Zuckerberg tells court he made WhatsApp and Instagram better (The Verge)

Oh, Also

How to destroy a small language online

This ABC Science article about someone who generated millions of Wikipedia articles in less popular languages using AI is worth a read on its own (ABC), but it reminded me of one of the all-time great Wikipedia language controversies.

Four years ago, someone made a post to r/Scotland with a Hall-of-Fame title: I’ve discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can’t speak Scots (Reddit).

Obviously, this is an incredible level of cultural vandalism. But it’s also extremely funny that someone “duped other people into believing that Scots really is just misspelled English.” And, as a perfect palate cleanser, check out the Wikimedia response (Wikimedia).

May you all enjoy this weekend with the passion of a random US teen erasing a small language’s online record ❤️.

Isn’t this beautiful in its own way?

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The End

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

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.

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